Re: rights (fwd)

[Lin Zhe Min <ljm@xxxx.xxx.xxxxxx.xxxx]

#2 of our discussion

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:49:32 +0000 (GMT)
From: Lin Zhe Min <ljm@marx.ljm.wownet.net>
To: Robin Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: rights

coi doi robin.

Can I forward what you've written to the lojban list? That'll be quite 
interesting... And where are you from? Turkey?

On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Robin Turner wrote:

> Apologies for writing in English rather than Lojban, but it's been a hard day
> and my brain isn't working very well ...

Then I'd apologise, too. I haven't learnt lojban quite well, though I've 
known it and have had the draft textbook since 1992; I haven't pay much 
time to study it. So if you write me in full lojban, I'd be very confused 
and need to look up most words in the gismu list. :-)

> considered as an auxiliary language, while Interlingua, Occidental etc. could
> be understood easily by most Europeans.

It's quite well. Thus, they're not worthy being called an artifitial 
language, but rather a planned language (as what Esperanto documents 
said). Oops. What the conference be titled is 'auxiliary language'. :Q
Interlingua, Occidental, Ido and Esperanto is frankly and obviously 
easily understandable to Indoeuropean descendants (exclusive Persian and 
Indian. <Grin>). Since themselves are also descendants of the Proto-
Indoeuropean. And most of them are inheritances of western european 
languages. One Polivian told me that Esperanto is just like Spanish.
As I learn English and French, I can partially understand what she've
told. Well, let's have another idea. If you show some sentences written
in Esperanto or Interlingua to some eastern europeans (like Czechish or
Russian), who have never learned English, Spanish, nor French (German is 
okay, since the root of the vocabulary is different), Esperanto would be 
better understandable than Interlingua; since Interlingua is just a 
simplified version of English. You may try, and tell them how narrow are 
their languages.

> In particular I thought that Lojban would be easier for Chinese-speakers,
> partly because the grammar is a bit closer to Chinese, and partly 
> because there's so much Chinese in the vocabulary (e.g. {hirma} has 
> only the 'h' and 'r' of English 'horse', but all of Chinese 'ma'). 
> In your experience, is this true?

Talking about the vocabulary, it is _sometimes_ true to me, since I've 
learned English and I know surely Chinese. <Grin> But I'd say, I can 
accept well the arbitrary of a language (as what Saussure said). And some 
specific words, like 'cukta' 'hirma' are quite learnable to me, since 
it's somewhat Chinese-English combination (and there are many words as 
this). However, since I've read some papers about the inguistic statistic 
of gismu, I've found that if I told them the truth, maybe whole lojban 
gismu should be turned over. I've found that they got an English-Chinese 
dictionary, and look up a word without checking up its exact meaning, 
without any help from Chinese native speakers (or someone who expertises 
in Chinese). This caused a very serious misinteprete when analysing/
phonetising Chinese words. Some of their samples are not correspondance 
to its meanings, and some samples are neither used in Ancient Chinese 
(wen2 yan2 wen2) not Modern Chinese (bai2 hua4 wen2). However, thanks to 
the arbitrary of languages, I don't think lojban gismu are worthy to be
remade.

And from aspect of phonetic structure, lojban gismu would be very simple 
to Chinese people, since each Chinese word is pronounced as a closed 
element. And lojban prononciation is quite like this. However I think 
Semic people would profit more: all lojban gismu are constructed by 3 
consonants, as, all semic vocabulary (i.e. in Arabian, Hebrew) is 
constructed by 3 consonants also.

The abbriviation of gismu seems to be profitable by Chinese people. 
However, the direction is different. Chinese words are very simple in the 
ancient age: one word, one meaning, and its prononciation is never 
improtant (if you're not making some poems). And by its modernalisation 
(or transformation, since it takes some two thousand years to be like 
what we're using today), shorter words are become longer and longer (thus 
2-syllable-words are more frequent). And the combination of two words is 
performed by taking their ancient root, and the combine. It'll not be 
very difficult, since the vocabulary hasn't changed too much. E.g., 
[book] is now [shu1] or [shu1 ben3] in Chinese, and its ancient counter 
parts are [shu1] and [ben3] (which have slight differences). Then, a note 
book is [bi3 ji4 ben3] (bi3 ji4 means literally noting by using a pen); 
and a desk where you do your homework is called [shu3 zhuo1] (book, 
table). And [zhuo1] is called nowadays [zhuo1 zi3] (zi3 is added for 
helping pronouncing the word). __However, the direction is different, as 
what you've seen. We may profit a bit, but not too much. German people 
are also familiar with the combination and the abbriviation.

And to the grammar of combination, I think that's too chaotic today and 
there is no standard (as a feature of lojban). European people make a 
combination according to their recognition of signification of a word, 
and we ours. So if some day I'd write a text in lojban, maybe everyone in 
the list would pay many efforts to understand what I'd written, and they 
would discuss the way of combining two gismu. [shu1 zhuo1], I'd say 
[ckujbu] (CCVCCV is okay, isn't it?) [bi3 ji4 ben3], I'd say [notcku]. I 
don't know what you'll understand by seeing this kind of words. Let's 
have another example (where I know the cultural gaps are a bit huge):
television means tele- (far) and vision (see) in all european languages. 
(French: télévision, German: Fernsehapparat) But in Chinese, it's called 
[dian4 shi4 ji1], a combination of [electricity, see, machine]. If I 
write it in German, as Elektrosehapparat, everyone would think I'm fool. 
:Q And in lojban, what would you say? The [tivni] (a word I'd say, 
partially inherited from Indoeuropean. `Partially' because it inherited 
only the phonetic, but not the notion) or [diktiv] or even [dikvi'amij] ?

The logical grammar is different to Chinese grammar. So I don't think 
it's worthy to be discussed. Only those who have learned the logic can 
profit from the grammar. :-)

> By the way, I studied Chinese for a year when I was at university - I found the
> grammar really easy but could never remember the vocabulary.

Oh.. No.. The grammar is never easy, since you would never know if you 
get it right or wrong. <Grin> Okay, okay... to the native speakers, it is 
surely easy. :-) But some friends from other countries told me that there 
are two difficulties they've met: they don't know why they're wrong, in 
many circumstances; they're easily confused since many words (even 
two-syllable-words) are identically pronounced. Take an example as:
jin4shi4 jin4shi4 jin4shi4 jin4shi4. And hao3 jiu3 bu2 jian4. You can 
look them up in the dictionary, if you want to.

The first sentence means (in a significant explanation) "nowadays, those 
who have a diploma have always glasses on their face". And the second, 
we'd inteprete it as a habit as "long time no see". But it can mean "good 
wine never sold cheap" or "there is never wine which can be called good" 
or "good wine doesn't spoils out". :-)

> my mind now are a few sentences like "Women duo hen dao duanlian" and
> "Tongzhemen! Zhanxilai!" - our textbooks were written during the Cultural
> Revolution!

Some minor errata. But quite dramacomic. :-)
I don't understand the first sentence and I cannot guess it. And the 
second should be "Tongzhimen! Zhanqilai!" (Comrades! Debout!)

Maybe you need a more modern textbook, I'd say....
:Q


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