Contest

The designers of a new langague are seeking input. The person who submits the most useful suggestion will receive free a signed limited edition of The Complete Grammar of Simplang, a language mathmatically proven to have the smallest possible grammar.

Input is sought for the design of Inoffensish. This language is to allow people to make statements about the world that won't offend anyone. For example, these two sentences would translate to exactly the same sentence:

In 1492 Columbus discovered
America and brought
Christianity to the new
world.

In 1492 white europeans began
a centuries-long program of
genocide against native
Americans.
In Inoffensish both sentences would mean something like:

In 1492 Columbus opened the
new world to Europeans, which
has had profound effects,
both good and bad, for
aboriginal North Americans.

The purposes for this langague

peace studies, diplomacy, press
releases by groups dependent on
government funds, etc.

Send in your suggestion now!

(taken from http://www.invisiblelighthouse.com/langlab/conlanghumor.txt)
Originally published with side-by-side Esperanto translation. Anyone want to do it in lojban?

I seem to recall an implementation of this, called by the same name, from the eminently brilliant and humorous Jacques Guy a.k.a. frogguy. Here's a link: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8389/inoff.htm

The obvious way to implement it is to make Christianity and Genocide be the same word...

That's it, exactly! It's the BS-ish business (so much loved in our flat and hypocritical western society - esp. the U.S.!) to call something white-black or right-wrong or "Let us all be happy and peaceful, clap our hands and sing ..."