Lojban
The Logical Language
Log in
Username:
Password:
I forgot my password |
CapsLock is on.
Log in
History: Case against a lujvo dictionary
View page
Source of version: 6
(current)
Notes Toward An Anti-Dictionary Position (taken from egroups): ...i would just like to interject that the bulk of these lujvo belong to a period in the evolution of lojban usage, in which it was thought necessary to coin a lujvo for every english word the speaker was trying to express, rather than attempting to formulate original thoughts in lojban. very many of them are bad lojban, & i see no need for this labor for the most part when equivalent tanru can be coined naturally & understood readily; in fact, going through that trouble tends to cast an aura of officialness on them & would lead to unfortunate habits of usage were they to become regarded as exact equivalents of the english words they were coined to express. there are indeed lujvo we need, but at the moment i even think a certain amount of awkwardness is preferable... in any case we need not await THE dictionary before attempting to express ourselves in lojban directly. that would be like shakespeare not daring to write until samuel johnson came along... what i object to is the prospect of having to live with a dictionary full of words that don't mean what they're supposed to mean. even if this sort of semantic drift has occurred repeatedly in english (since e.g. the era of ''la grana desku''), it is still possible to specify the register of english that is being used, with key words not found outside it. i can see how the shortened sort of lujvo might become, not "slang" (since that already presupposes a lot of uses that don't yet exist in lojban) but something like slang that signals its own context; however this distinction depends on having the longer, more accurate forms available for the same meanings... >until we >have committed sufficient lexicon to paper there are 2 related fallacies here. first, that because ''rarnybau'' have ''valsi mutce'' & ''la lojban'' doesn't, we need to go madly about ''cnino finti le lujvo'' for every ''ze'i se jinvi'' that pops into one's ''stedu''. ''ienaisai''. that's a good game, but no more than a game. when we ''bilga co cusku da'', we will be able to ''cusku da'', because the ''ve cusku fi da'' already exists, ''mulno''. back when the prospect of using lojban for international patent ''ve skicu'' first came up, i thought, "uh-oh --when my ''karce'' 's voltage regulator gave out, it killed the battery; & after i bought a new battery it happened again; & i had to get a new alternator finally before i could fix the ''nabmi'' (or something like that)-- & i wouldn't begin to know how to say this ''bau la lojban'', much less talk about something which no one else has ''viska'' before..." but of course if i were ''lojbo tavla'' with a ''lojbo karcycikre'', we would be able to work it out... (& we don't need to, UNTIL then.) ''remai'', the ''vitno smuni'' of words is not the ''mokca smuni'' of words. you don't make a translation ''ratni'' by ''ratni'' & expect ''nal''-babelfishgibberish. there isn't one single "word for" anything in lojban. please! my ''karce'', my ''marce'', my ''matra carce'', my ''dargu gunro'' --my ''malmabla mabla'' when it won't ''zukte''-- only the whole tissue of ''bangu'' makes it possible for this referent-speaking & that referent-rolling (or not?), to have any relation at all. which is the meaning of meaning ''bau la lojban.'' which is not, ''je'u'', the meaning of meaning ''bau la gliban'', where since we have gobbled up 10 languages' worth of ''valsi'' we have had to develop 10,000 sub-nuances to keep them separate... maybe all i am saying is that to ''derxi jmaji'' a dictionary of lujvo is simply ''malglico''-- ''girmu'i se xusra'': "lojban, the language that ''ckasu cisma'' at websterization"-- ;:''mi mutce le ka tugni fi le du'u ma'a na nitcu lo'e lujvo vlacku iku'i lo'e gismu je cmavo vlacku zo'u frica cuntu i xagrai va'o le nu lei smuni cu se ciksi bau le lojbo --mi'e ((xorxes))'' ;:.i doi maikyl. (to ma po'u na'ebo do pilno le de'u bangu toi) mi ji'a .ue ruble tugni fi ledu'u lo lujvo derxi na plixau .i mi pu stidi loi seljvajvo mu'i lenu ribvi lenu lo lujvo derxi poi lei smuni cu cunso cu se jmaji .i ku'i mi xarnu bandu ledu'u zbasu lo vlacku poi tcila skicu ro gismu .e ro cmavo .i doi xorxes. lenu skicu lo lojbo fo lo lojbo cu cinri je banli gi'enai ka'e se troci pu lenu finti lo glibau vlaskicku .i naku vofli gi'enai .ei pubo cadzu -- mi'e ((nitcion)). For my part, I believe we need a lujvo dictionary. But I would like one which is restricted to high-quality entries (very different from what we have now). I don't think there should be any hurry to make tons o' lujvo so we can have a big dictionary; that will (1) gives us more bad words and (2) won't help that much because there are so few speakers, and people have enough trouble learning the gismu and cmavo. But in the long run a big supply of good lujvo will help everyone speak more clearly and precisely. ''Perhaps a dictionary of lujvo commonly used with a now-standard meaning? Things like'' vlivla'','' lobykai'','' tavlykai'','' javnykai'','' lujyjvo'','' ziryro'i'','' malglico'','' brivla'','' selma'o'','' seltau'','' tertau'', you get the idea.'' ---- If there isn't a lujvo dictionary, then how to beginners figure out the word they want? Do they have to learn how to make seljvajvo, or guess about what the appropriately constructed lujvo ought to be. Or in grand Lojbanic tradition, do we just fuck the beginners? --((Jay Kominek|jay)) ''Because many of us are such geeks that it's our only hope...'' ''Do we really ignore beginners? One can easily find the lessons if one knows where to look, and it really is possible to learn from a reference grammar; I am. --anon'' We don't make it at all easy for beginners. Forcing them to learn how to make fu'ivla and quality lujvo before they can find words for many important concepts. --((Jay Kominek|jay)) ''Sure we do. I bet none of you realized this, but I have never used the lessons, because I am learning just fine from the ((refgram)). - ((kreig.daniyl.)), who forgot to sign his writing above, but that was me.'' Er. I learned from the ((refgram)) also. Learning the grammar is a small subset of what beginners want to do. They also want to be able to develop a vocabulary which includes words that deal with their life. (((Science Terminology|Botantists might want words about plants, linguists will want words about language)), etc) If they don't have those words, it will be, (I postulate) difficult for them to come close to developing fluency, because they don't know words for things they want to think about. Further, the community doesn't make it easy for people to join it, IMO. We can't kick everyone in the head who needs to become more friendly, but we can at least produce word lists in dictionary format. ''If you want to learn Lojban, you have to learn how to make ((fu'ivla)) and ((seljvajvo)). Lojban is __not__ the easiest language to learn, and to learn it well, you have to ... learn it well (surprise!). If you want [http://ttt.esperanto.org|Esperanto], you know where to find it. Eventually, (when Lojban becomes a real language with fluent speakers and all) people will learn it by learning the grammar and reading (or hearing) enough fluent language use, using the concepts they are interested in expressing. High quality texts are more important that a dictionary, and fluency will almost definitely not come by looking up Lojban equivalents of English words. Personally, I know that all of my foreign language dictionaries are much more heavily used on the foreign-to-English side than the other way, and I highly doubt that I'm exceptional. -- ((Adam))'' ---- Ninpre (==beginners) should be taught whatever words are actually most actively used at the moment. Right now that would be mostly gismu, plus a few lujvo that are common (ninpre, jbopre, xrukla, nerkla, plixau, sampla, are some examples that come to mind from IRC these days). Fu'ivla aren't as much used at the moment, but it's possible that there could be a fu'ivla upswing (mi nelci zo klamburi) so that it would make sense to teach ninpre all the common fu'ivla right away. We should recognize that Lojban is a living language and these things are always changing. A dictionary of lujvo certainly shouldn't be prescriptive. There are and have been a large number of speakers of Lojban by now, and we all know what we're doing-- even though we all know slightly different ideas. :) Most of the lujvo which have been invented, and even most of those which were picked up and used by the community, are long since forgotten. It would be sad to put out a dictionary at this late date which portrayed Lojban as if it were a blank slate, an empty language longing for words, instead of showing it full of sofybakni (at least five of them) and tavlykai (whatever that means) and jbobau, lobykai (subtle shades of lojbanity) and ninpre (not nearly as harsh a word as "noob", maybe even gentler than "newbie"?) and (from more recent history) le klamburi be zo cakla bei zo ckakla. mu'o mi'e la mungodjelis. no'u la bret.
About
Introduction
What Others Say
FAQ
Learning
Books
Vocabulary
Lojbanic Software
Community
Web/Email Forums
IRC Chat
Links
News
Dictionary
Swag
Multimedia
Lojbanic Texts
Audio
Wiki
Recent Changes
Popular Pages
How To Edit
The LLG
Official Projects
Publications
Donate!
Contact Us
Search Lojban Resources