Re: [lojban] About the word "fluent".

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

Taking this out of order.

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 08:17:36PM +0100, selpa'i wrote:
> I'm not sure the bushmen analogy holds. I wouldn't be surprised if
> the bushmen were in fact able to communicate just fine, the only
> thing is that they would have to resort to their limited
> vocabulary, but they would be able to describe things anyway. They
> might call skyscrapers "heaven houses" or whatever, and the cars
> "magic horses" or whatnot, but they *would* be able to express
> themselves fluently.

I think that's really optomistic.  Sure, they might call the cars
"magic horses", but they wouldn't both instantly think of that, or
agree on it.  They'd be like "Uhh, that... thingy... what the hell
should we call that?" "Ummm, I dunno.  Fast box?"  "That's kind of
lame.  How about magic horse?" "Oh, yeah, that'll work."  [ignoring
that bushmen don't have horses, or anything like them (that is:
things humans ride to go faster), to the best of my knowledge]

You seem to be assuming that they'd instantly come up with the
appropriate new vocab, which I think is deeply unreasonable.

> Here's my opinion:
>
> You are not fluent in Lojban, based on what you described.

I'm not sure I disagree; my point was mostly that whether you call
me "fluent" or not depends a great deal more on what "fluent" means
to you than on my actual abilities.

> And it doesn't matter what the reasons for that are, the fact
> stays the same. 

Then it is physically impossible to be fluent in Lojban at this
time, because this will happen all the time every day until idiom is
built up.  Which is fine, I just want to be sure you understand what
you're asserting.

> You are right that Lojban might not yet be equipped for every kind
> of topic you might want to speak about, but this doesn't change
> the fact that you are not fluent. Needing a long time to describe
> relatively basic things in a language means that one lacks
> practice in that area and/or that one hasn't been exposed enough
> to this context. I would argue that you should be able to express
> the vast majority of things you need to express using the version
> of Lojban that exists right now, as long as you know every gismu
> like the back of your hand (and know all the cmavo and grammar, of
> course). That is, I believe it's possible to make do with what we
> have right now, 

I agree, and I did.

> and if one is fluent then one is able to do just that in a fluent
> fashion.

I think you are unreasonably optimistic about what "in a fluent
fashion" means.

> This doesn't mean that it's purely a short-coming on your part;
> it's just the way things are at the moment and as the language
> matures, we mature with it.

*nod*

-Robin

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