Re: [lojban] Summary: Cultural fu'ivla

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 6:50 PM, MorphemeAddict <lytlesw@gmail.com> wrote:
> I see it as an emergent property of a language, above the level of words.
> (OR) The set of words called language X has properties than the words
> themselves don't have.
>
> Words have many properties that are not also properties of the language they
> are part of.
> Cultural bias in individual words is not a problem. That's what fu'ivla are
> for, among other things: importing words from other languages, making such
> fu'ivla necessarily culturally biased. Those biased fu'ivla don't
> necessarily make the language as a whole biased.
> Also, the very existence or absence of a word could be considered culturally
> biased. That's the problem with the cultural gismu. They are biased towards
> cultures that have their own gismu.
>
> stevo
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 19:54, MorphemeAddict <lytlesw@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Has anyone ever said that individual words shouldn't be culturally
>>> biased, e.g., your example of "portugala/portugese"?  I have only ever heard
>>> that the language shouldn't be culturally biased.
>>
>> I keep trying to respond to this, but I'm not sure what you mean.  If the
>> bias doesn't come from words, their sources, and their meanings, where do
>> you see it coming from?
>> Chris
>>
>> --

 I concur.  The question of "does using autonyms = being cultural
biased" should be answered "no".  The fact that "everyone outside of
country X uses words related to exonym Y, while those inside use Z for
their nation" can be based on a whole lot of reasons, e.g. "X was
conquered by nation H, an empire that influenced the language of  many
other peoples"  Doesn't make history "less culturally biased"  just
because X is powerless to stop use of Y-derived names.  American Sign
Language faced down this issue many decades ago.  Back when I was
learning ASL in the early 80s, many country signs were derived from
American stereotypes of of other countries (ex. "Chinese" signifying
the epicanthal fold, "Egyptian" mimicking the pharoanic headdress'
serpent, etc.).  By the time my wife went to Gallaudet in the late
80s, PC powers that be had chucked all American national signs in
favor of autonyms created by the native signers, for those countries
that had a sign language.

  Even Loglan (1975 version, which was the one that I learned 30 years
ago) had a class of primitives (what we would call "gismu") called
"N-prims" which were derived solely from one language or language
family, rather than the classic 8 languages (they used two more than
lojban) used for other primitives (C-prims), when the item/concept
referred to was mostly confined (natively) to one area/language group.
 And it wasn't just for countries or languages.  For example, "simba"
for "lion" and "galno" for "gallon".

                         --gejyspa

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