[lojban] Re: How many fluent speakrs of Lojban are there?

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 03:42:57PM +0900, Seo Sanghyeon wrote:
> 2008/9/14 Brett Williams <mungojelly@gmail.com>:
> > Define "fluent".  There are perhaps a few dozen people who can
> > have a comfortable conversation in Lojban.  None of them are as
> > fluent in Lojban as they are in their native languages, but I
> > don't think that's even possible-- no one knows the Lojban words
> > for "carburetor" or "lemon merengue pie", for instance, because
> > there aren't any.
> 
> What's wrong with using fu'ivla for "carburetor" for example? Many
> of world's language (for example, Japanese) is full of loan words
> for modern stuffs.

Nothing; someone just has to define them and get other people to
learn them.  If you make one up in the middle of a conversation,
you're unlikely to be understood in practice (see
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/double-illusion.html ; this
has nothing to do with Lojban).

-Robin

-- 
Lojban Reason #17: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo
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http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/


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