Re: [lojban] Cool

[Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com>]

On 22 August 2010 21:14, A. PIEKARSKI <totus@rogers.com> wrote:
> Not so!  English may be the closest the world has to having a lingua
> franca, but most of the world does not speak English.
>
> Your example of French speakers using 'cool' is not very convincing.
> Take the six languages that provide the basis for our gismu.  How many
> of their speakers use 'cool'?  I have travelled in in Eastern Europe (including
> Russia) and been in China.  Few people there spoke English, and the
> ones that didn't certainly didn't uses 'cool'.
>
> The danger of succumbing to the temptation of using English words
> that are not widely used in the non-English speaking world is that Lojban
> will be seen as yet another conlang devised by English speakers for
> English speakers.  The creators of Lojban went to some trouble to
> ensure that didn't happen (coming up with the gismu creation algorithm
> was hardly a trivial understaking!),  Their vision was a good one.
> I think we should stick to it.


Indeed, you do have a point and I think you misunderstood me, I wasn't
trying to say the opposite of what you said because I completely agree
with you. However, what if in the other five of the six languages
there simply isn't a native analogue of the modern meaning of English
word "cool"? That would hardly be surprising, the modern meaning of
cool has only been part of the English language since recently, before
it used to mean nothing but "cold" and "calm".

What would we do if there simply isn't a Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish,
Russian nor Hindi analogue word with such meaning? Would we give up
adding that word to Lojban vocabulary?

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