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[lojban] Re: [hobyrne@gmail.com: Alphabet]
*sigh* I still didn't get to the end. But I am determined.
John E Clifford wrote:
I think we can all agree that the
world is a better place (at least a more fun place, or a more mentally
stimulating place, for us personally) for having Lojban. I happen to
think Lojban would be a better language for having an alphabet such as
VS (or Lhoerr).
Ou would like it better. How would it *be* better?
It would be better liked. By at least one person.
Muh. I'm getting tired. That's not a good answer. There's much more
to it than my personal preferences.
Lojban implements reductionism on many levels. This has advantage not
only in each level individually, but in making Lojban as a whole a
cohesive entity by its consistent adherence to the one principle across
the levels. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I propose
applying reductionism to the phonemic map. (I could swear I've said
that five times already.)
Point one: I believe it will make the implementation of the phonemic map
superior, in that reductionism in general improves many many things, and
I believe this is one of them. Point two: I believe it will improve the
cohesiveness of Lojban as a whole, by implementing this principle more
consistently (by that I mean, on more levels). (Perhaps this is where
I've failed communicating before: such explicit enumeration right next
to the ideological framework of the previous paragraph. But I could
swear I've said each of these points five times before, too, at least
sometimes in the proximity of the ideology.)
Counterpoint: How would it be worse, long-term? I have not seen
anything you have put forward yet that addresses this question, so it's
about time I asked it.
Counterpoints (one): Do you believe reductionism is not, inherently,
mostly a good thing? Do you believe that the phonemic map is not an
area of the language that can benefit from reductionism (independent of
your personal preferences)? (In anticipation of a 'yes' answer, because
all indications so far suggest that will in fact be your answer: Do you
believe the word map is an area of the language which has benefitted
from reductionism: which has created the phonemic map? Do you see some
fundamental difference, independent of your personal preferences,
between the word map and the phonemic map that makes reductionism more
applicable to one than the other?)
Counterpoints (two): Do you believe Lojban design is not heavily
weighted in favour of reductionism? Do you believe that a consistency
of form, extended to another level of Lojban, does not improve overall
cohesiveness?
- I'm trying to pin down the points on which we conflict, because right
now I just don't understand it.
I'm not interested in Lojban because of *need*. I think it's *fun*!
As to 'a consistent way to represent the [sounds] in the language": VS
is a symbol set that has a couple of *levels* of consistency, _within_
its representations of sounds, whereas the current Lojban alphabet is
just a set with no more meaning or depth than its superficial arbitrary
definition.
What relevant advantage does these purported deep consistencies offer. Just having some
consistencies is not a reason for introducing something to Lojban, especially if it makes things
more complex in the process. And consistency seems to be all that VS has to offer.
RPA offers deep meaning as well as deep consistencies. It offers a
gentler yet learning slope to someone who knows no alphabet. It offers
a smaller symbol set that is thus easier to learn.
These are the relavent advantages on offer. Do you believe that they
are disadvantages, rather than advantages?
VS is simply better at *being* 'a consistent way to
represent sounds'. The Latin alphabet is only barely adequate, its only
claim to being anything more than completely arbitrary is its
'familiarity' to a large portion of the world, which I address in
another post. I prefer a usefully structured, tiered system over an
arbitrary, flat one.
But that familiarity is just what recommends it to Lojban (Lojban could have a much nicer set of
gismu for a number of of purposes if we did not want them to be familiar to most speakers, but
that familiarity is a design feature).
I'm thinking long-term, apparently much longer term than you.
Personally, I think this is a symptom that I have more hope for the
language than you have. But emotion is clouding my judgement right now,
and I suspect I haven't yet really talked to your ideological core
(which I look forward to, but I understand your reluctance to expose it
to a boisterous stranger), so my evaluation is one made from a
standpoint of ignorance.
What you and I are familiar with is irrelavent in the long-term. In
fact, social inertia is one of the biggest *impediments* to progressive
improvements. I invite you to clean your mind of preconceptions. I
suggest that a mind in such a state will be more sensitive to long-term
trends, in that you'll be getting in touch with more fundamental levels
of the human experience, deeper than the fleeting cultural fashions of
this generation, or this era; that will be more a more consistent anchor
for generations to come than current obsessions within this culture.
(and English doesn't even want that, since, like Chinese, it is probably more
important that all English speakers spell things pretty much the same way than that they spell
'em like they say 'em -- or we reproduce another kind of spoken mess).
Irrelavent to the subject at hand.
Was a response to someone talking about English spelling reform, so relevant to the context but
that context was indeed irrelevant to whether to use VS in Lojban, which is not English and
already has a “perfect� spelling system.
Okay. I should have pointed out the irrelavency at an earlier stage;
pinning it on your paragraph was misrepresentative of me. I apologise
for the implied criticism. I think we can let this part of the thread
die now.
Has Lojbanistan ground gotten so stale already?
I take these comments about not modifying an existing system to apply to VS (a century and a half
old) as well as the Latin alphabet.
:-) I see your point. It's an amusing paradox.
VS is old (temporally stale), but is still insightful in the area it
addresses. Lojban appears intellectually stale (the way you represent
it), in that it's (you're) not open to recognising benefits of such
insightfulness. Granted, the alphabet may not be considered a
high-priority, *core* component of Lojban, but it is a component
nonetheless, and an unavoidable one at that.
But (as noted several times) new alphabets never had a chance
for Lojban,
intellectual staleness?
because they were unfamiliar to most people
short-sightedness
(and, believe me, people have proposed
other alphabets – especially Tengwar – from the get-go and have devised quite a number of
totally new forms, many based on the same unfortunate principles as VS – at least to the
similarity of characters for similar sounds).
Your valuation of what is 'unfortunate' is not shared by everyone, and
in fact is opposed by many people, you say. Have you ever thought about
that?
They have all been rejected despite a good deal of
pleading in their behalf.
I happen to consider myself an above-average pleader. :)
And some of them were actually pretty and had other virtues.
I don't mean to rule out other virtues. I used VS as a convenient place
to point to, to indicate the ideological direction I was pursuing. To
be more clear, I now champion RPA. And RPA doesn't even exist yet, so
may have virtues such as prettiness and maybe some you haven't even
thought of yet. Maybe some *I* haven't even thought of yet, for that
matter. I look forward to discovering what such features might be. I
think it's unfortunate you don't, but... that's your choice.
mi'e .xius.
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