Subject: Re: [lojban] A wide variety of comments...

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 17:09:37 +0200

Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> For the purposes of meme propogation, what do people think of the
> idea of going through the [...] process of getting a Paramount
> license and making a 'Vulcan dictionary' that is actually lojban?

The idea of Lojban as Vulcan has presented itself to me and a few
others, actually, but in reverse, so to speak: not `why doesn't
Lojbanistan acquire Paramount's permission to use the name of their
logical kindred', but rather `why doesn't Paramount use Lojbanistan's
logical language (instead of making their logical kindred communicate
by uninflected grunts that don't come across as convincingly logical,
even when people try to make a system out of them)'.

One problem is, of course, that (as pointed out) Lojban's logicality
is not of the same kind of the Vulcan's. Another is that the Vulcans
are extraterrestrial folk, so their languages are obviously completely
unrelated to anything Terran, and Lojban has transparent Terran roots.

(Not that this consideration has stopped people from proposing Vulcan
languages in which `logic' is _olozhika_ and `soldier' is _ask'ersu_. ...)

And do we want to be associated with Star Trek anyway? There are
Klingonists (such as myself) who don't appreciate being thought of
as Trekkies; many Lojbanists (such as myself again) wouldn't either.

> and then I thought to myself, "[...] Maybe if it caught on
> people would start being _less_ violent and rude to each other
> instead of more so".

They would do no such thing. The reasons for violence and rudeness
are social/economic/historical/political in nature, not linguistic.
(Many IAL proposers take the contrary for granted, something I find
very objectionable.)

-- 
<fa-al-_haylu wa-al-laylu wa-al-baydA'u ta`rifunI
wa-as-sayfu wa-ar-rum.hu wa-al-qir.tAsu wa-al-qalamu>
(Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi)
Ivan A Derzhanski <http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria <[email-masked]>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences