From robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR Sun Apr 09 03:33:53 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8674 invoked from network); 9 Apr 2000 10:33:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 9 Apr 2000 10:33:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr) (139.179.10.13) by mta1 with SMTP; 9 Apr 2000 10:33:51 -0000 Received: from bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (engun11.fen.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.97.145]) by firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA20269 for ; Sun, 9 Apr 2000 13:35:51 +0300 (EET DST) Message-ID: <38F05CC4.DB5D95D5@bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2000 13:34:44 +0300 Organization: Bilkent University X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban list Subject: Re: [lojban] A wide variety of comments... References: <200003180824.DAA00505@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <38D790A7.42A6@math.bas.bg> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-eGroups-From: Robin Turner From: Robin Turner la .ivan. cusku di'e > (Not that this consideration has stopped people from proposing Vulcan > languages in which `logic' is _olozhika_ and `soldier' is _ask'ersu_. ...) > .u'i > 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.) And you missed out "evolutionary", though that's a controversial one. However, since a lot of violence and rudeness is cultural, and language is a significant part of culture, it could have some effect. Effective communication does not eliminate violence or even rudeness. What it can do is significantly reduce _unintentional_ violence and rudeness. Most people (and other animals) tend only to be violent when threatened, and good communication can significantly reduce imagined threats (from "Sorry, I didn't realise this was your seat" to "Look, when Kruschev said 'bury' he really meant something like 'absorb'."). I suppose a language which was both logical and emotionally expressive might help a little. Nevertheless, as Ivan says, we don't want to be too utopian. In the RPG I netioned, the first thing the "geek" character learned to say after "mabla" was "le do mamta cu gerku"! co'o mi'e robin.