Subject: Lojban's linguistical potentials & perspectives

From: "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:53:22 -0000

Being a scratch-new language and virtually based on world's "biggest"
languages, Lojban for sure can be a promise to mankind to 
equally being *neutral*, sensitive-precise/sensitive-fuzzy and -
hopefully first of all - *open* to the wide range and scale of 
conveying the contents of all the languages used to express/form
human thoughts/feelings etc.. Limited in its outer 'shape' though 
(and 'restricted' to its very independency by logic), Lojban could
have a unique chance to 'drink from all the different manifold 
sources of human spirit and soul', to open and widen itself, and thus
being/becoming a means for the world able to comprise 
everything ever thought and expressed by mankind ... :) Just wishful
thinking??
IMHO, Lojban then could have much more of than just being a so-called
meta-language - because, if the tool is going to have more 
fine and distinctive features than the stuff it's used to be worked
on, it'll be better sticking to the tool itself.
Just one simple example: When trying to translate Gottfried Benn's
expressionistic little poem 'Kleine Aster' (http://www.fa-
kuan.muc.de/BENN.RXML) into English, there was no means to express
the German word 'ersoffen' other than by English 'drowned'. 
To me it was a real 'breath-taking' and frustrating experience
discovering the limits of a that huge language like English - but 
invain I ran my head against these - infact unexpected - fences:
there is no means expressing the different ways people and animals 
are 'drinking' like in German: trinken/saufen*, hence 'drown/drowned'
cannot be given like in German 'ertrinken/ersaufen' or 
'ertrunken/ersoffen' with the 'picture' of 'drinki
ng-to-death-in-water etc.'. So, it is impossible in English to give
the 'picture' of 
a 'beertruck driver' drowned *like a dog/cat/rat* or whatsoever! And
it's like this in many ways - think of the scarcity of 
diminutives in English. (In Svabian-German dialect they even have a
diminutive form for saying 'now' - jetzadle!). Many an 
English-speaker might shrug his shoulders and say "what does this
matter!". So, of what use would be a capable and mighty meta-
language still unable to convey the "ersoffener Bierfahrer" into
English?

* (I do not use 'saufen' with regard to animals, but to people
excessively drinking alcoholics)

co'o mi'e .aulun.