I bothered to write all this explaining what its like to think in Lojban and whether it helps you think, so Ill paste it here too: Hello! Im something approaching fluent in Lojban. Im as fluent anyway as anyone else seems to be so far. Ive found that while language can feel sometimes like it belongs to you individually because its so personal, its actually both personal and interpersonal. No single person can create something as rich as a full language, so its really a flowing living thing much larger than ourselves, that were conditioned by on many unconscious levels. You notice language at the moment you speak with it, and at that moment your thoughts and your language seem to go together well enough. But what you dont notice is the you you might have been, had it been easier for you to speak of different things. Surrounding each thing you notice are an infinity of things that you dare not notice because of the hidden stress there would be in explaining them. As I said, language is something we do together. Im sharing with you now this moment in the great project of English (not that it needs help). To learn to speak Lojban at this still early date is to still to participate in the project of creating it, as its a much younger language. Where English has such a cornucopia of colorful words that you can forget it doesnt literally describe every single thing (let alone even a tiny sliver of the infinity of possibility that surrounds each finite thing), Lojban for its part still has gaping emptinesses and confusions. It feels like swimming in a shallow pond at best, and other times trenching through dense swamps. Its not yet the worlds best language for discussing anything at all except parts (and still only parts) of Lojbanic culture and grammar. For me up until the past week or so I had given up on this Sapir Whorf business and the main reason Ive actually stuck with Lojban is because of that quality it has of still being a nearly blank canvas. Im a conlanger and I enjoy making new words for things, but I enjoy it even more when theres hundreds or thousands (barely) of people who might actually understand and respond to my inventions. For me its been mostly a way to conlang with both the convenience of having the (to me) boring parts of the language already made and just the interesting parts left to finish, plus the bonus of having some actual other people to talk to with what I come up with. As I said, until the past week. Ive been studying Lojban for a couple of decades now, on and off, casually chatting I guess. The past week or so Ive started seriously attempting to think in Lojban all day long, to allow it to finally replace English as the lingua franca of my own mind. As I said, I long ago set aside the notion that Lojban would deeply alter my perceptions (since it didnt really seem to be), and I continued learning it for other reasons. But um I guess Im going to admit I was wrong. Thinking in Lojban really seems to feel very different to me. Putting this difference into English words is tremendously difficult for obvious reasons. But I guess I can try. It has to do with infinity. Infinities are present everywhere. In the feelings of things, around the thingishness of things. Everything loses its solidity and exists only in relation. At the same time everything is extraordinarily solid, each thing rests in its own perfect place. Where other languages are full of phrases, theyre linked up, twisted up, tangled up, Lojbans bridi have majesty. They have infinite space everywhere in them. Look at mi klama lo zarci I go-to the market (a standard old example sentence). To you as an English speaker it feels like words and phrases and saying phrases, and if you wanted to say something different youd need to like build a new sentence from scratch, flowing through the phrases. But in Lojban mi klama lo zarci doesnt feel like that at all. It has infinite spaces tucked into it everywhere. Look now at this related bridi: mi .au .ao .oi nai .ua .ou klama lo zarci, the same bridi decorated with a few attitudinals so that now it expresses I want, hope for, feel pleasure in, gain from and relax about that its me whos going to the market. No matter how much you tuck in between mi and klama lo zarci, the structure doesnt buckle. The English translations start to groan from bridi like that, trying to reestablish their context at the end and get their flow back going. They always just want to say something like to that but you cant just stick to that after a long explanation of your feelings and related situations and then just simply go back to the top level and say to and youre good. You lose the thread. Lojban isnt fragile like that. Its full of infinity because it stands steady against infinite complexity. Im trying to explain. How do you explain in English how English isnt sufficient? When you hear English cant contain infinities you so automatically respond So? I cant think in infinities? Why would I need a place for infinities? Well I hear you. I gave up. I couldnt think in infinities either. Not until a week ago or so, when I started trying to think in the infinite language, Lojban.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 08:39:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015