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

From: Robin Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2000 13:34:44 +0300

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.