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

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 06:44:02 -0400

>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.

I am not interested in learning new natural languages that don't have more
speakers than Esperanto, certainly. As for reasons lojban offers more than
natural languages, I predict that due to its computer parseability and
unambiguous structure Lojban is likely to be the first langauge used by AI
programs; I also hope that it is eventually used to test the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis and want to be there when it does, and it expresses things in
ways that I have not seen natural languages do - Attitudinals being the big
example.

>* 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.

I use word. I want to be able to type, because my handwriting is awful.

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

Not necessarily complete. Just enough that the speakers don't get into
fights about how to say computer (or anything else) - yes, I've seen that
happen in Esperanto.

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

I really like it, but what I REALL wanted was a language that I could
pronounce - buffer vowels allow me to do that with the longer and thus hard
consonant clusters, and the others that are 'crunchy' tend to have syllabic
consonants.

>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.

I believe I have enumerated what that "mysterous something" is above.

>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.

However, the typing difficulties may contribute. And when I first looked at
esperanto, I actually was a bit put off by the propaganda - which is not
always accurate, causing me to become frustrated. Esperanto is NOT totally
regular. It is NOT, as some claim, identical to my native language except
for the sixteen rules (and how they presume to know what my native language
is, I don't know). With lojban, the only false claim is that of total
unambiguity, which it took me long enough to realize wasn't completely true
that I had seen enough positives to outweigh it.

--la kreig.daniyl.

'segu le bavli temci gi mi'o renvi lo purci
.i ga le fonxa janbe gi du mi'
-la djimis.BYFet

xy.sy. gubmau ckiku nacycme: 0x5C3A1E74