|
Alrighty, I’ll bite, what’s
the advantage? “I speak a syntactically unambiguous language, which
allows me to _________, whereas you can’t.” Not only do I believe that there is no
valid answer to fill in the blank, but I believe such an answer is precluded by
the definition of language (but I’m still a little fuzzy on exactly what
that definition is, linguistically speaking). And I _know_ it’s
precluded by the practical implementation of all natural languages (and most
conlangs), that is, by the amazing adaptability of languages. Is it
theoretically possible to be confused about what someone means?
Absolutely, and it doesn’t matter what language they use as much as it
does peoples’ grasp of the language. Does it happen a majority of
the time? Not a chance, or even close. Society would be a completely different
place if you had a less than 50% chance of being understood if you sat down at
a bar and said “Gimme beer” (which, if you’re counting, has 1
made up word, 1 invalid implication that the beer would be given freely, is a sentence
fragment, contains no articles, doesn’t specify a target, and probably a
half dozen other unintended nuances that lojban wouldn’t jive with).
Actually now that I use those words it
occurs to me that there’s a science fiction book in that idea somewhere:
just what would such a society be like? If you were even a little bit
clever about it the race that was usually misunderstood would somehow parallel the
challenges of today’s machine interfaces. They could then be
encountered by a race from jboplini and depending on the message you want to
send the rest of the book is based on the details, and any more thought on the
matter will launch me onto a tangent which might result in writing a book.
One last thought on the book (not really, but it’s the last one I’ll
write), I can’t imagine any situation in which jbopre as the protagonists
could achieve the entirely patronizing outcome I always associate with the
desires of underdog supporters… now if the jbopre were the enemy…
you’d have to tread carefully, but it could be done. The way I see it, lojban’s only real
advantage in the grand scheme is how it forces your mind to work, an internal
advantage having nothing to do with communication. However, because
languages are plastic, accommodating minds that can’t work that way and people’s
inherent laziness would reduce the language to something that wouldn’t be
of much benefit to your mind compared to any other natlang. But I could be wrong, it certainly wouldn’t
be the first time. --M@ From:
lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org [mailto:lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of Andrii (lOkadin) Zvorygin You know guys, I am
serious, people really buy this stuff. Logical languages have a powerful
advantage. There is also a Lojban facebook group, perhaps you want to
join there, and I can redirect some traffic there. On 12/31/06, Timothy
Hobbs <tim.thelion@gmail.com>
wrote: have you heard of the
devils dictionary?
|