Re: [lojban] Re: I wanted to share this with you (writing thingy!).

[Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 5:20 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> And the point of all this is...?  Creating new alphabets is an interesting
> part of language creation and give flight to the more aesthetically
> inclined.  It is thus welcomed and applauded.  But the suggestion that we
> actually use this (or any other clever alphabet) for Lojban inevitably
> brings on the point of practicality.  It is hard enough to learn Lojban as
> it is, in a familiar -- if  slightly modified -- alphabet, bbut to add
> learning a new alphabet, however clever, may well be the straw, etc. (see,
> as a not very atypical example, my years of not learning Hebrew, not to
> mention Chinese).  The fact that the letter ""all look the same" just adds
> to the problem in this case (cf Hebrew again and Armenian and Thai to start
> the list). While the claim is not literally true, it is perceptually true
> enough to amount to a serious problem.
> But it sure looks nice.

Creating new and inventive ways to write Lojban that each internally
preserve desirable lojbanic qualities, with no expectation that they
will ever catch on, and creating beautiful things with them is a hobby
nearly as old as the language itself. Seriously, the CLL mentions
Cyrillic (an actually practical one, for jbopre in Slavic countries)
and Tengwar. This sort of thing is in a very real sense the most
popular artistic tradition of the Lojban community.

So, the point is joy. And art, without which no community can thrive.
It is entirely useless, but it is fun and beautiful and that's good
enough for me.

(And it reminds me that I need to get around to digitizing some of my
own Roman-alphabet Lojban calligraphy.)

mi'e .kreig.daniyl.
noi zu stidi su'o ve pensniste ku ku'i na stidi .ai le du'u plixau

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.