from Wikibooks: Lojban/Culturally neutral: Difference between revisions

From Lojban
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
 
m (Conversion script moved page From Wikibooks: Lojban/Culturally neutral to from Wikibooks: Lojban/Culturally neutral: Converting page titles to lowercase)
 
(One intermediate revision by one other user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
#REDIRECT [[Talk:La Bangu: Is Lojban an auxlang]]
Culturally neutral
 
Lojban attempts to maintain cultural neutrality, particularly as compared to other constructed
languages such as Esperanto which use European languages, sounds or conventions as their
basis. The main sources of Lojban basic vocabulary are the six most widely spoken languages (at least during Lojban's birth): Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic; the mishmash gives Lojban
a truly international flavor and keeps the language's style and sound from favoring one culture over another, as much as feasibly possible.
 
Lojban words never automatically insinuate the gender of the subject or speaker, contrary to English and other languages: if gender is not stated explicitly in Lojban, it is not implied. Likewise for tense, spatial or temporal are not implied in default Lojban grammar and must be manually added. These too serve to keep Lojban culturally neutral, and to draw attention to gender and tense only when a speaker or writer feels the need to.
 
Lojban also has a marker (pe'a) to designate figures of speech, thus 'back stabber' translated as-is into Lojban would always be taken literally as 'one who physically stabs physical backs', unless otherwise indicated, in order to set aside, deconstruct and learn from cultural linguistic constructs, all on common ground.
 
Lojban endeavors to provide a neutral linguistic structure upon which people can build, rather
than enforce linguistic sterility. By starting with a system that is as neutral as possible
and drawing attention to culturally weighted concepts, Lojban seeks to make ambiguity and
culture-specific language visible and clear, rather than remove it.
 
{{BookCat}}

Latest revision as of 08:54, 30 June 2014

Culturally neutral

Lojban attempts to maintain cultural neutrality, particularly as compared to other constructed languages such as Esperanto which use European languages, sounds or conventions as their basis. The main sources of Lojban basic vocabulary are the six most widely spoken languages (at least during Lojban's birth): Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic; the mishmash gives Lojban a truly international flavor and keeps the language's style and sound from favoring one culture over another, as much as feasibly possible.

Lojban words never automatically insinuate the gender of the subject or speaker, contrary to English and other languages: if gender is not stated explicitly in Lojban, it is not implied. Likewise for tense, spatial or temporal are not implied in default Lojban grammar and must be manually added. These too serve to keep Lojban culturally neutral, and to draw attention to gender and tense only when a speaker or writer feels the need to.

Lojban also has a marker (pe'a) to designate figures of speech, thus 'back stabber' translated as-is into Lojban would always be taken literally as 'one who physically stabs physical backs', unless otherwise indicated, in order to set aside, deconstruct and learn from cultural linguistic constructs, all on common ground.

Lojban endeavors to provide a neutral linguistic structure upon which people can build, rather than enforce linguistic sterility. By starting with a system that is as neutral as possible and drawing attention to culturally weighted concepts, Lojban seeks to make ambiguity and culture-specific language visible and clear, rather than remove it.