From opoudjis@optushome.com.au Wed Dec 11 04:29:31 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 11 Dec 2002 12:29:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 58702 invoked from network); 11 Dec 2002 12:29:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 11 Dec 2002 12:29:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail019.syd.optusnet.com.au) (210.49.20.160) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 11 Dec 2002 12:29:30 -0000 Received: from optushome.com.au (c17180.brasd1.vic.optusnet.com.au [210.49.155.40]) by mail019.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id gBBCTTs08049 for ; Wed, 11 Dec 2002 23:29:29 +1100 Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 23:29:28 +1100 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v548) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: Re: Aesthetics To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <3150A98B-0D04-11D7-8AA3-003065D4EC72@optushome.com.au> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.548) From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=90350612 X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 15:34:27 +0000 From: "Jorge Llambias" Subject: Re: Aesthetics cu'u la xorxes > la nitcion cusku di'e > >> And I regard the refusal to include graphic representations of >> punctuation (the dotless style) as callousness to me the reader. > > The dots are not punctuation in Lojban, they are word-internal. > > If they only appeared in {.i} it could be argued that they > were punctuation, and there they do provide some help to discern > the structure of phrases, but in other places I find them more > disruptive than helpful. I will come clean: it's the omission of the sentential dot in {i} that I find callous. The rest, well, I omitted a dot in the title of the Lojban brochure myself (yes, yes, it's back in now), and we all know what cmene are when we see them, even if space delimited. >> Yes, I >> can work out Lojban written without dots. But why is your lojban so >> cool as to merit the extra headache? > Once you accept that it makes no difference, you don't even > notice which style you're reading and the headaches go away. > Something like the x- and h-surrogate alphabets for Esperanto. > Some people like to spend a lot of time arguing about it, but > most people don't even notice which system they are reading > unless they pay special attention to the matter. I dunno. I mean, I've corresponded with my co-translator in ASCII Greek for 7 years, and neither of us will change their transliteration (and they're quite differently structured). And I admit that punctuation is a very culture specific thing (I was talking about that with a friend today, actually; the whole system of punctuation as we know it in English really is a late Western invention, and most scripts barely have the equivalent of a period/full stop.) And yet, please give me something more to delimit sentences with than {i}. Give me the dot there, and do with the rest what you will. Or don't. -- Dr Nick Nicholas, nickn@unimelb.edu.au French/Italian, http://www.opoudjis.net University of Melbourne "There is a danger, my dear Neophron, that they will go further, and conceive a contempt for the stress-accent as something very trivial, and will decree that any group of words of any kind is a verse." --- Maximos Planudes, predicting free verse and worse, late xiii AD.