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[lojban] Re: Oldbie Question from private mail.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> Someone sent me (as lojban@lojban.org) private mail to ask:
>
> 3) This url states that : http://arj.nvg.org/lojban/myths.html
>
> 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".
>
> Is this all true?
It was I who wrote the above paragraph.
The fact that the Loglan prim "blanu" had two places, can be seen from the
Scientific American article, and from
http://www.lojban.org/files/draft-dictionary/Working/OLDLOG.TXT , where
Loglan "blanu" is translated as Lojban "blamau".
As for the claim that the place structure change was motivated by some
ideal of equality, all I can say is "I think someone wrote that on the
mailing list somewhere". Unfortunately, when I wrote that web page, I
didn't yet realize how important it is to include references. I think
sure I could find the original passage somewhere with some web searching,
but I'm not entirely sure. If that turns out not to be the case, I'll
remove that claim.
In any event, the remaining bullet points in that section are enough to
underscore the main point: that it is not possible to achieve full
cultural neutrality, because you cannot fully liberate yourself from the
biases inherent in your thought. I now realize that that is not expressed
as explicitly as it should be.
--
Arnt Richard Johansen http://arj.nvg.org/
Jeg er nok verdens sydligste sengevæter. Forutsatt at ingen på basen på
Sydpolen driver med slikt, da. --Erling Kagge: Alene til Sydpolen