Subject: Re: Laadan [was: Re: [lojban] A revised ce'u proposal involving si'o (fwd)

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 02:13:11 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> At 01:45 AM 9/20/01 +0000, michael helsem wrote:
> > >From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
> >
> > >Actually, Laadan was more thoroughly designed than you give it credit
> > >for. SHE did write it up in a book, and apparently there has been a small
> > >circle of people who got to minimal conversational ability with it.
> > >
> >
> >yes; i have the book, & while it's not as thorough as a poet
> >might wish, it does lay out enough to get started. and i have
> >to say, it is an interesting sketch. but it hasn't received
> >the intense usage & development that Klingon (which started
> >at about the same point) has seen. i'm not even sure if anyone
> >besides the inventor has written in it...
>
> I'm not sure the inventor ever wrote in it (more than teaching examples),
> rather than about it. But she did publish a newsletter in which she
> reported on others who had used it. And she has a discussion on her web page:
> http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Laadan.html

She writes:

"They lacked ways to express emotional information conveniently, so
that -- especially in English -- much of that information had to be
carried by body language and was almost entirely missing from written
language. This characteristic (which makes English so well suited for
business) left women vulnerable to hostile language followed by the
ancient "But all I said was...." excuse; and it restricted women to the
largely useless "It wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it!"
defense against such hostility. In constructing Ladan, I focused on giving
it features intended to repair those two deficiencies."

Since we have attitudinals in Lojban, we should not color utterances
without attudinals with emotional content, as we do in English and
probably all natural languages. Since we have cmavo ui we have no need for
subtlety and entendre, and in fact should do away with it, since perceived
unintended slights are a major miscommunication threat. It should be
possible for me to utter {do bebna} without offense. However, {le'o do
bebna} is fighting words.

Discuss it here:
http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?full=Emotions%20in%20Lojban

-----
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Sami ul-Haq, Osama bin Laden's closest friend in Pakistan, runs the
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