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

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

To be clear: what I'm basically saying here is:

- people think they know what fluent means

- what it actually means is unclear, possibly incoherent, and may or
  may not match what people think it means

- even when it does match reasonably well, what *I* think it means
  may or may not match what *you* think it means, but people
  expect/believe that what they think it means is universal/obvious

- so please don't use that word in the context of Lojban, which
  happens to be an edge case that exposes holes in that concept

-Robin

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 10:48:39AM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> 
> (This sort of dovetails with the earlier thread about how "lock two
> people in a room and present them with two-person puzzles of various
> complexity" as a way of producing somewhat "objective" fluency
> tests)
> 
> OK, so people keep asking me if I'm fluent.
> 
> When I ask people what they mean by fluent, they usually say
> something that boils down to "you can say whatever you need to say".
> 
> So, let me give you an example of why that metric *simply doesn't
> work* in the case of Lojban.
> 
> The other day RJ was watching basketball, and I was playing with one
> of the babies, and she was, surprisingly, avidly watching the TV.
> Having nothing better to do, I decided to explain basketball to her,
> in minimal detail.
> 
> This took me the better part of 10 minutes, and involved a great
> deal of stammering and long pauses.
> 
> I could re-do it in a couple of minutes of smooth Lojban.
> 
> The issue is simple: to the best of my knowledge, *no-one* has
> *ever* described or talked about basketball in Lojban before.  So I
> had to come up with terms for the name of the game itself {ti poi
> nanmu cu ci'erkei la julne bolci}, the act of dribbling {bolci minra
> gasnu}, the concept of travelling {bajra se cau lo nu [go'i]}, and
> making a basket {punji le bolci le julne}.
> 
> I think that anyone asking me if I'm fluent that saw that would say
> "that was halting and lame; no, you're not", but what if I explained
> to them that no-one has ever done that before?  That I had to make
> everything up as I went along?
> 
> The word "fluent" simply doesn't effectively apply in a context
> where the language is so under-used that any speaker *regularily*
> encounters situations in which no idiom or terminology exists, at
> all.  It's like putting two bushmen in Time's square, asking them to
> describe what they see, and then accusing them of not being fluent
> in their native tongue, except with everything.
> 
> -Robin
> 
> -- 
> http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
> .i ko na cpedu lo nu stidi vau loi jbopre .i danfu lu na go'i li'u .e
> lu go'i li'u .i ji'a go'i lu na'e go'i li'u .e lu go'i na'i li'u .e
> lu no'e go'i li'u .e lu to'e go'i li'u .e lu lo mamta be do cu sofybakni li'u
> 
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-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
.i ko na cpedu lo nu stidi vau loi jbopre .i danfu lu na go'i li'u .e
lu go'i li'u .i ji'a go'i lu na'e go'i li'u .e lu go'i na'i li'u .e
lu no'e go'i li'u .e lu to'e go'i li'u .e lu lo mamta be do cu sofybakni li'u

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