Re: [lojban] mistakes

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another example of this kind of snowballing thing.  {xalka}.  I've seen it
> used a few times and so have used it myself in places like {.ui mi pinxe lo
> mutce xalka .uisai}, completely unaware of the existence of {jikru} which
> seems far more appropriate in most circumstances.

I don't think it's exactly an error to say {mi pinxe lo xalka}, since
you are drinking alcohol (along with other things), but it's certainly
a strange habit we've had!  Thanks for spreading the word about
{jikru}, Luke.  Once we're all saying {jikru} all the time you should
feel proud every time you see it!

Part of why I've chosen to focus on Lojban as a conlanger is that what
I most like to invent about language is the subtle qualities of
meaning, the depths of semantics and usage, and I especially enjoy
seeing what I've created come to life in a community.  So for me
Lojban is a golden opportunity: a combination of an active speaking
community and a severe lack of vocabulary.  At first I expected that
the way I'd express myself creatively in Lojban would be to invent a
lot of lujvo.  I still do plan to invent a lot of lujvo, eventually,
and I've made a few here and there.  But as I plumbed the depths of
Lojban I discovered that much of the vocabulary that our living
language is in need of is already there for us in the gismu list!  So
I've been enjoying the art of bringing dead dark parts of the gimste
into light and life.

And I do think there's a lot of art to it.  The surface meanings of
the gismu are already given to us, the denotative meanings.  But I
believe there's a lot more to a living word than what it denotes.
Obviously {jikru} has been sitting there denoting liquor forever.  But
we've been saying {mi pinxe lo xalka}, oblivious of it.  As you bring
it to our attention and we start to say {mi pinxe lo jikru}, there's
something new about {jikru} that's been created.  Something other than
meaning, even.  It will probably start to develop connotation, now
that we've started to think it and say it more often.  But there's
something even more fundamental than any of its meaning, which is the
living connection between us as speakers and that meaning.  Even
without changing at all as itself, it's changed tremendously in
relation to us.  Suddenly it doesn't just mean liquor in dead theory
on the page, it means it to us, and it's what comes to mind when we
want to talk about that.  The pattern of what words we know and use as
a community is tremendously complicated, living and breathing,
massive.

So here's another perspective on it: Lojban I think can be affected
strongly by our errors, but many or most of our errors continue to be
errors of omission, things we fail to speak, things we fail to
explore.  We've been making the invisible, intangible error this whole
time of mostly forgetting that {jikru} exists, forgetting to bring it
to life.  By enthusiastically speaking and exploring our language we
inevitably commit some small affirmative errors, but those are
relatively easy to notice and correct, and they're overwhelmed by the
many errors of omission that we correct by giving life to old and new
things that we ought to be ready to say.

mi'e .telselkik. mu'o

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