Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"

[Michael Everson <michael.everson@gmail.com>]

On 10 Apr 2010, at 21:52, Yoav Nir wrote:

> Well, linguists consider linguistics to be a science, not a branch of engineering, and science is always descriptive, not prescriptive.

Nonsense. Linguists also study orthography and the relation between "standard" dialect and orthography and literacy and a host of other topics which relate to "prescription".

> So, yes, they consider all conlangs as games, as opposed to languages people actually speak, which are "natural" phenomena worthy of study.

Oh, do keep your generalizations to yourself. This is really annoying.

> As And said, a language is real to them only if it has native speakers, and all constructed languages, including even Esperanto, are at best second languages.

Untrue. Untrue. Untrue.

> (now somebody's going to link to some parents raising their kids in esperanto,

Thousands of kids were raised as native speakers of Esperanto.

> or to that guy who tried to teach his kid Klingon as a first language,

Anomaly, everyone knows that.

> but these are very small exceptions, and those kids grow up to speak the environment's language, not the constructed language they heard at home)

Please go do some homework.

Michael

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