Re: [lojban] English

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:

Capitalization: meh. {la} and {.i} and {ni'o} are better than capitalization in my book.

Soulless: I couldn't disagree more. Lojban is lively; it's full of life and zest. Attitudinals can be dropped in anywhere to spice up a sentence; flexibility of syntax keeps things mixed up plenty. English loses some of its *grammatical* soul because it has so many restrictions that pop up mid-sentence. It doesn't conform rigidly to rules but if you don't conform reasonably to a rather extensive set of rules, you get a sentence that is at best awkward and at worst severely ambiguous. ("I used one of the things that Joe proved completely incorrectly" is a real world example, which actually offended "Joe" until I explained.)

Unemotional: again, no. The lack of ambiguity in Lojban is in its syntax and grammar; a phoneme stream parses in exactly zero or one ways. It is not necessarily *read* in exactly zero or one ways. This is a fundamental distinction between *ambiguity* and *vagueness*. Not all meaning must be specified in Lojban, but what meaning is specified cannot be interpreted entirely differently from how it was intended by the speaker. Hence Lojban can (and very very often is) vague, but cannot be ambiguous. I think your love of ambiguity is probably actually a love of vagueness.

Whether we need it or not: No one ever claimed that we needed it. It's perhaps been claimed that it can be useful, but I'd say the only thing which is outright universally asserted is that its students enjoy learning it (which is of course circular, since few would study a conlang for very long if they weren't interested.)

I think that some people really did/do need Lojban/Loglan. For starters, there's James Cooke Brown, the inventor/creator of Loglan. Then Bob and Nora LeChavalier and others in the Lojban Language Group. Then all the people who spend time on Lojban instead of doing other fun/interesting/productive things with their time. Lojban was an idea whose time had come.

stevo

mu'o mi'e latros

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 5:28 PM, John Smith <thantophobia295@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know about lojban. I just don't know. I mean, what kind of
language isn't even capitalized? An unimportant one, that's what, or
at least that's what I learned in first grade. Important things are
capitalized.

I don't know a lot about this language, but I think it's kind of
soulless. Oh, yeah, I know, you've heard it all before, but the thing
Spock didn't realize was that being completely logical IS the best
thing to do, IF you account for emotions. Marrying someone to find
out about their species? That's about the least logical thing I've
ever heard. You have to realize that there's more to things than just
cold, hard logic.

I think English is awesome. All the other languages make quite a bit
of sense, but English, no, English is like the badass language. It
doesn't conform to rules. It makes no sense at all. Like, for
example, a while ago I discovered that an alternate spelling for
"Medieval" is "Mediaeval." How awesome is that?!? Seriously, that's
so cool, when you spell it like that, it seems like you're actually
some mediaeval knight or something who spells things weird.

Who cares about unambiguity? I love ambiguity. Ambiguity is great.

And you know what else? It has to do with the feeling of "support"
for words. Like, instead of saying old, say olde, or colour instead
of color. The modern words are all "new" and "chic," but they don't
have that supporting spurious letter to give them that English feel to
them. It feels like the old words are heavy fortresses with
spuriousness that makes it strong and firm, but the moderns say,
"Hey! We don't NEED those letters. They're unnecessary. Let's get
rid of 'em!" So now, the words no longer feel strong and firm; now
they feel like they're hanging by a thread, supporting themselves, but
barely.

See what I did there?? I put a semicolon! I love semicolons!
Whatever happened to semicolons? Also, whatever happened to starting
questions with "whatever" instead of just "what?" Or putting end
punctuation marks inside quotation marks even when it doesn't make
sense (technically proper grammar, actually)? What fun is having no
punctuation? No fun, that's what! Punctuation is awesome! Why would
you want to get rid of it?

One of the things I really don't like about lojban is that there are
no capital letters! What is that? I love capital letters. And
what's more, I'm sure that if they DID use capital letters, they would
call them uppercase letters and abolish the word "capital!" How lame
is that?! Haven't you ever said to someone, "Capital day, isn't it?"
Sounds cool, don't it?

In conclusion, I think lojban has its advantages and disadvantages,
but really, do we really need it? We already have perfectly good
languages. I think people do this for fun, thinking, "Ha! I've
removed tiny problems from language. All the tiniest inconsistencies
have been eliminated." I think the problem is that it's
reductionist. That is all.

P.S.: Whatever happened to "Yes! yes! yes!"? Is that cool or what?

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