Subject: Re: sts- [was: RE: [lojban] Brochure updates

From: "Brion L. VIBBER" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 20:12:45 -0700

Craig wrote:
> Nonsensical? Flamewar? Not really. I was explaining my personal reasons for
> not liking esperanto, NOT pushing others to not use it.

Obliquely at best, and using very poor examples. From what you have written, 
my interpretation of your personal reasons as presented is:

* You are not interested in artificial languages (except lojban, which you 
find to "offer more than any natural language" for unspecified reasons), and 
consider Esperanto as being essentially a natural language.

* You are only interested in languages which are fully ASCII-compatible 
(such as lojban), or else specifically supported by Microsoft Word. ISO 
standard character sets and widely available 3rd party software, apparently, 
aren't good enough.

* You are only interested in languages with complete morphological 
unambiguity (such as lojban).

* You like to be allowed to insert vowels into any consonant cluster, not
just at morpheme boundaries.

Needless to say, this predisposes you to lojban. As Nick said, 
congratulations, you've found it! :)

Which is fine, however... If *all* you're interested in in a language is 
ASCII orthography and unambiguous morphology, then perhaps these are valid 
concerns, but I'd be very surprised if *nothing* else interests you about 
lojban -- the mysterous something that lojban "offer[s]". And if so, then 
that whatever-it-is must be missing from Esperanto for you.

Nobody gives up a language because they were too lazy to install a keyboard 
driver -- they give it up because it doesn't interest them enough to learn 
and use it.

I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from, here...

> At least I didn't bring out the old line about Mr. Wo's wife. (He left her
> because she was a wino.)

Snork! That's a good one... relies on a horrible English or American accent 
if you speak it aloud though. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)