Re: [lojban] Questions about Lojban

One thing I feel has been lost in this conversation is there's an implicit attitude in a lot of this talk like a language is basically a static thing. Like, it has some properties, and you fit it into your brain, and then how do those properties affect that brain? But languages aren't a fixed static linear process like that. One aspect each language has is its capacity to accept new things back into itself.

English for instance seems to me to have recently become slightly somewhat more accepting of portmanteaux and novel affixes, which surely means native speakers of today's English are more likely even in thinking to themselves to use a novel portmanteau or affixed word. Lojban of course is at a much more dynamic phase of its development, where radical changes in aesthetic are still common. But I feel strongly that even beyond this turbulent stage, Lojban is by its very nature a more dynamic language than English.

The ability of a new or newly used cmavo (Lojban function word) to sharply transform its surroundings is something that does not and cannot exist in English. English's power to assist thought consists mostly of providing seemingly infinite rich bouquets of idiom, just a few of which suffice to paint a vivid picture. This has a feeling of being enriched by (yet thus necessarily also constrained and conditioned by) a vast Pandoramic history (Pandora+panoramic, sorry). Today's Lojban is in comparison a quiet empty room, the only history a small layer of dust from previous work done to the magnificent dynamic sparkling machine alone in a corner of our vast hopeful warehouse.

Where English is a palette with a million beautiful colors mixed ready for you, Lojban is just primary color tubes-- but with a thousand amazing little paint mixing machines that make you whole infinite dynamic spectra. When someone invents a new word of English, you get one new beautiful color. But if someone thinks of adding to Lojban a simple little tube of brown, everything everything everything changes.

It's really next to impossible to explain to someone who speaks no Lojban precisely why a cmavo is more powerful than a new word of English. It feels like if it were the sort of thing that were easily explained it would also be the sort of thing you could easily think around. It actually conditions thought deeply because it's actually rather strange. I thought of explaining it like this, but it doesn't make sense: Imagine if there were a new word of English, "flarf," and saying "flarf" didn't exactly mean anything but rather for the rest of the sentence all the nouns were verbs and all the verbs were nouns. That doesn't make sense, does it? You just can't think of that. You can't do that. It would be very hard to do that and it doesn't even make sense what I'm talking about. Yet, I feel sure that the fluent Lojbanists who will read this paragraph will think, aha, yes, that's right, that's true, that is the power of a cmavo. It's a power that cannot be transplanted into English, where things do not so easily become one another. I feel it is a deep deep thought that is not in the normal English speaker's mind.

<3,
mungojelly (la stela selckiku)