Re: la'e lu bradi je bandu li'u poi pemci

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> >i se pagbu le so'i lojbo notci be fi mi  .i ri se judri zoi gy
> >http://people.fix.no/arj/lojban/index-x-lojban.html gy
>
> i uecai uacai uicai do pu mipri lo lojbo selmanci
> i e'usai rodo vitke le di'u se judri

It is indeed a wonderful site, which I am working my way through.  Some
comments on the part on cultural neutrality:


> When the new vocabulary was made after the Loglan/Lojban split, the semantics of the colour
>      adjectives were changed. The word "blanu" no longer meant "x1 is bluer than x2", but "x1 is blue".
>      The justification for this change was "we don't want a world where everything strives to be bigger,
>      better and taller than everything else". This is clearly a strain of the Western ideal of equality, which
>      by no means can be called "culturally neutral".
>
Well, I'm not sure how Western an ideal it is - you could equally well see
it as Taoist.  But I think there were simpler semantic reasons, as
demonstrated by the recent Loglan/Lojban exchanges on the cogling list (most
of which were forwarded to this list.

>      To express the concept of old age (as in "old book", "old man", you have to use "tolcitno"
>      ("un-young"). There is no separate word for "old", but there is for the small/big, hot/cold, short/long
>      pairs. This means that it's easier to say that something is young than that it's old. Isn't that
>      reminiscent of the Western youth ideal?
>
Nah, just people being stingy with gismu.

>      It is said that the Lojban community is overcrowded with computer freaks, programmers, science
>      fiction authors and fans. Lojban may have been affected by that. At least one of the gismu seems to
>      suggest exactly that: namely "terdi", which stands for: "x1 is the Earth/the home planet of race x2".
>      Now "home planet"... of another race than human beings... that's science fiction isn't it?
>
Here I agree.  Lojban does have a kind of nerdy feel to it, but that's fine
by me.  It'll change as more varieties of people start learning the
language, since even if the gi'uste has a slight bias towards science,
technology etc. it still covers enough semantic space to enable other Lojban
subcultures to create the vocabulary they need from lujvo, or, as a last
resort, fu'ivla.  At the moment, a look at the lujvo list does indeed
reflect a strong bias towards computing, RPGs and interesting sexual
practices, but if a load of, say, English aristocrats joined the Lojban
community, I'm sure we'd have lujvo for "polo", "Coming out ball" (that's
debutantes, not gays) "tea with the vicar" and, well, more of the
interesting sexual practices, probably.

Cultural neutrality in Lojban is like democracy - an impossible goal, but
one worth striving for.

co'o mi'e robin.