One reason I really admire lojban is it can remove bullshit from human discourse. With well-defined functional ways to say things, you expose subjectivity and biased argument on virtually a syntactic level. The discussion about la .alis these past days I noticed 'weasel words' in Michael's emails quite frequently-- words like Latin and typography were berthed by good connotations, and in the opposing corner were words like jettison, oddball, etc. And then his conclusions were all based on self-substantiated appeals to facility and reading aid. If ko'a had written in lojban, I daresay that it would be much clearer that he was coming from a purely aesthetic stance, and that arguing about convention, learners' impressions and standards were tangential.
I think that, like 'jettison' and 'oddball,' cultural terminology as we use it in natural language consists much more in subjective social constructs that anything terribly clear. Look up a rigorous definition of ethnicity, and you'll find that its accepted to be a social construct. We need not labor the point that Religion varies from participant to participant, community to community. When I say that I am Hispanic and Christian, have I really said anything beyond murky affiliation to names of some�murkily�defined communities?
Obviously, its very important to be able to talk about things like religion and ethnicity. But unlike (legal) nationality and language, they don't have qualifications and acknowledged standards.
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 03:29, MorphemeAddict
<lytlesw@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think equating cultures to the main country they typically occur in is a good idea.
What's better?
I think you allude to usage where political generalizations would not align with a given culture-- i.e. minorities. In such cases, I think that language or country of origin are often to bear the most direct clarification-- for example, "My family lives in the United States and speaks Spanish" is much more clarifying than "My family is hispanic." I'm open to hearing alternatives,�I would argue that cultural generalizations, such as several dozen multi-functioning gismu do us much less justice. I mean, what do we do if someone says { .i mi kulnu rakso } ...except guess whether they speak kurdish or a rural variant of iraqi arabic? Language is the predominant vessel of 'cultural lineage' and the legal systems of defined political territories define communities bound in time and space. Tell me a more useful alternative that couldn't do with a tanru or lujvo.
For religion or ethnicity, tanru or lujvo are better, because when these terms DO have a meaningful definition, why not use it? What does it mean to say I'm Confucian? Well, if I don't respect my elders and exhibit aspirations to follow the examples of my predecessors, I don't really live a Confucian life. So, confucianism might be respect-follow-examplism, or social-hierarchicalism. If there is no clear definition of a school of thought, then an objective characterizing feature is appropriate. Monotheism covers lots of bases, and you can add some more gismu to 'pacevni' to get the desired denominational variety. I see advantages to talking about Sunni and Shi'a using terminology that highlight objective differences in practice, rather than just knowing the most common name for the sects by their followers.
co'o mi'e korbi