Re: live cultures (was: Promoting Lojban)

[Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com>]

On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Robin Turner wrote:

> {zo'osai} the fact that people _do_ write poetry in Lojban!

Yeah, I knew about that.

> {pe'i} Lojban is culture-free in the sense of not being confined to any
> particular culture, not in the sense of being culturally sterile.

Okay. That clears up my confusion.

> Things which make English difficult irrespective of this are its massive
> vocabulary,

But again, people coming from different L1 backgrounds have different
amounts of trouble with this. If your L1 is a Romance language or a
Germanic langauge, you have half of the vocabulary already, but if your L1
is Algonquin, you have nothing to start with. So difficulty is not equal
for different people.

> stupid spelling

No daut.

> and heavy reliance on metaphor.

Show me a language that *doesn't* rely heavily on metaphor, and I'll show
you a proglang. :^)

> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8309/ial.html

Eeek! IALs! *cringe, hide, run* :^D

Actually a well thought-out and informative essay. Thanks. :^)


---------(( Christopher Reid Palmer : www.pconline.com/~reid/ ))---------

              the characters i am, made into a word complete
                              -- Meshuggah