Re: my feedback/worries/interest/reaction/impression of Lojban (fwd)

[Colin Fine <colin@KINDNESS.DEMON.CO.UK>]

>Very interesting!
>
>I am a French-Canadian Esperantist and was lured to your
>Lojban site and read a bit and sort of browsed.
>
>Lojban seems *SO* foreign to me!  Unlike Esperanto, which
>tries to be similar to normal and easy communication and
>which follows universal concepts of verb, adj., noun. etc,
>Lojban seems to me very alien and unhuman!

mi stidi le si'o la .esperanton cu nalfange simla fi do ki'u le nu do se
ropnybangu .iku'i la .esperanton nepa'a so'a le ropnybangu cu fange
simla ti'i fi le so'i na'e se ropnybangu

I suggest the idea (that) the-one-called Esperanto non-alien seems to
you because-of the event (that) you are-Europe-languaged. In-contrast
the-one-called Esperanto incidentally-parallel-to almost-all the Europe-
languages alien seems (I suggest) to the many not Europe-languaged.

I suggest that you find Esperanto familiar because you speak a European
language (or languages). Speakers of non-European languages will find
Esperanto as alien as European languages.

To expand on this, your 'normal and easy communication' is not
universal: for example the distinct category of 'adjective' is not found
everywhere - in some languages there is no effective distinction between
nouns and adjectives, in others our adjectives have to be rendered by
verbal forms.

>
>Like it says, Lojban is very logical and computer-ish.
>It would well suit some sort of cyberpunk-fantasy alien
>race of machine-people or computers.  But as a language
>for use by men and women, it is very interesting...
>and probably a lot harder than you say it is.  When I first
>saw Esperanto, I was not as alienated as I was with Lojban.
>The concepts in Lojban seem so foreign to my mind.
>It would be very interesting to learn Lojban and thus
>learn to think in such a "Lojbanian", computerish manner.
>It feels like some sort of secret code that one would use in
>a war.

I don't think it is necessarily harder. You come, like many of us, with
preconceptions about how languages should work, and find something
different hard to learn because it won't fit into the preconceptions.
Try learning a very distant natural language (like one of your local
Amerind tongues for example) and you will have some of the same
difficulties.

>
>But if I am interested in learning Lojban... I certainly do
>not haev the time right now.  I am studying French and English,
>in both of which I am fluent, as well as learning Spanish,
>Latin, Espearanto, and German.  And another language at the
>moment would be TOO much! :)

Fair comment.

>In addition, Lojban does not seem to me complete. I would
>rather wait a couple years for it to be "frozen" as you say,
>with a dictionary and everything out.  Then I wouldn't have
>to learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Also fair.
>
>Perhaps it is ust I who am alienated by Lojban.  To me it
>seems SO foreign in its construction and manner of usage.
>I am very poor at mathematics, science, etc. but I am good
>enough to master French's most obscure grammar rules and
>exceptions, mostly because it is my mother tongue.  I always
>love to have a very creative and limitless mind.  I am
>a nihilist and dadaist.  Nothing for me is set, and everything
>is absurd and to paly with.  I fear perhaps usage and
>understandign of Lojban woul maybe stabilise my thought's
>freedom into logical ways that could make me more "computer"
>in thought and less "poetic" or "absurd".  But on the other
>hand, it could greatly improve a weak part of me! :)

You have hit the nail on the head about 'French's most obscure grammar
rules' - the fact is that as a native speaker you don't even have to be
aware of the rules, you just use them. (You have procedural knowledge of
them but not descriptive knowledge). We actually don't know whether it
possible for humans to acquire that kind of knowledge of Lojban -
finding out that answer is one of the purposes of the endeavour. (I
think most Lojbanists think the answer is yes, but we don't know). But I
repeat that acquiring the rules of many natural languages can appear
equally daunting: for example the use of the 'alienable' and 'non-
alienable' genders in Polynesian, or of triple-argument verbs in
Georgian.

As for whether learning Lojban could limit and 'stabilise' your thought
- it would be an interesting experiment, but I would put money that it
would do the reverse. It is true that in order to learn Lojban (as with
any other language, and the more so the more remote the language is) you
need to become more aware of what you mean, and what distinctions you
make. But that can only make you more flexible, not less.

 A parallel would be the personal development work I do in the Life
Training Program: people sometimes fear that if they look too deeply
into themselves, and especially if they learn to free themselves from
the drivenness that most of us live with, they will somehow lose part of
themselves, or cease to be active and creative. My experience is that
the reverse is true: once we learn what restrictions our thoughts and
society puts on us, we can choose where and how far we are going to
relax these restrictions on ourselves, and acquire greater freedom to be
ourselves.
 I suggest that the same applies to our language: once we become aware
what unnoticed restrictions our language puts on our thought and
expression, we may be able to find ways to transcend these restrictions
and make our thought and communication more varied and lively in any
language.
>
>I love absurdist and Dadaist literature.  It would be
>interesting to see how a competely Dada piece of literature
>could be translated into Lojban and if it could be possible.
>For example, Tristan Tzara's "La premiere aventure celeste
>de M. Antipyrine" or "Le coeur a gaz".  How is poetry
>translated into Lojban??

Would be interesting. Nonsense of an illogical and paradoxical nature
tends to come out as much more clearly non-sense in Lojban. But I don't
see why absurdism shouldn't work perfectly well - indeed better, because
hidden in Lojban bridi are all sorts of potential ideas (especially
using conversions and abstraction) which I at any rate find it very hard
to get my mind round.
Eg
        te ge gerku stidi = X is a dog-kind-of recipient-of-suggestion
whatever that might mean.

>
>Christian Richard
>French/English/Esperanto
>cprchrd@mailserv.mta.ca
>>
fi'i kristian.
co'o mi'e kolin


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|     Colin Fine    66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK       |
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