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Re: [lojban] Re: "la" in names

Yanis Batura wrote:


-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:18:14 -0800
Subject: [lojban] Re: "la" in names


Not a single Lojbanist has *ever* internalized this rule.  We know
this because *every* major Lojbanist has made this mistake, and it
showed up in "What Is Lojban?", which was proofread by at least 3
major Lojbanists.

We have no evidence, at all, that anyone can internalize this rule.
It's not about whether the rule is good or not.  I don't mind in the
slightest that "la" isn't allowed; that's the least of what we have
to do to Lojbanize names.  The problem is not what the rule
requires, the problem is that *we can't follow it*, and we've
*proven* we can't.


Hmmm... From the logical point of view... Lojban is a bit pertaining to logic,
isn't it?... Someone cannot *prove* that he cannot do something :) Proven can only
be a fact that someone *can* do something, by doing that. I suggest that you
use "shown" or "demonstrated" instead of "proven".

I am absolutely sure that a native Lojban speaker will have the rule comfortly
sitting in his/her brain. I am absolutely sure that given a good special training we will all internalize this rule.
I'm sure it's possible. But you're being pedantic. OK, we didn't *prove* it's actually impossible. What has happened, though, is that our experience has demonstrated that even very careful and very committed people working for a reasonably long length of time, have failed to internalize it. Could it possibly maybe happen if we just waited another three or four centuries for it to sink in (per person, that is)? Well, maybe, but in practical terms things just aren't working. Lojban is supposed to be a human-speakable language, and a language whose fairly major underpinnings you're still screwing up (and enshrining in writing and codifying as names for future generations) after decades of study is not of the same order as human languages. This is something that isn't working, and while maybe it is, indeed, learnable by someone with only another 40-50 years of practice, I would say that even under those circumstances, that *still* qualifies as not working. 

~mark