Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?

That's delicious.  Thanks for the "secret" peek into Lojban humor.  I have
the book, and there weren't too many chuckles in it.
RR

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Brett Williams <mungojelly@...>wrote:

> (CCed to the lojban-list, since I thought they might want to see what
> I had to say here.)
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:57 AM, RoseRose <faithfulscribe@...>
> wrote:
> > I'm personally of the Whorfian persuasion that different languages
> "cause"
> > different forms of thinking and different thoughts therefore arise.
>  Having
> > been so deeply engaged with Glide for 10 years, I've noticed I parse the
> > world differently--see process, for instance, more foregrounded than
> things,
> > flow more than form.  This is of course very subjective and not all that
> > easy to describe.  I am curious if anyone else sees effects in your
> > reality-sense that you attribute to your conlanging activities in any
> way?
>
>
> I've thought about this some over the years that I've studied Lojban,
> since Sapir-Whorf is an important part of Lojban's history and
> mythology.  I'm not sure exactly how Lojban was supposed to change how
> I think, and it's always difficult in life of course to tell one
> thread of cause from another, but I do think I might have a sense of
> some kind of effect that it's had on me.
>
> It affects most strongly of course how I think and feel about
> communication.  It's my sense that the cultural differences in
> communication between Lojbanistan and the outside world are at least
> as important as the linguistic differences.  Lojban is this very
> modular, tinker-toy-type language, where you can basically put
> whatever you want in a sentence by attaching things to the sides of
> other things.  But it would be perfectly possible to use that
> structure to build ordinary sentences, restrained by conventional
> forms and meanings.  There is also an exploratory, creative attitude
> in the way Lojban is used which feels to me essential in how it's
> changed my thought.
>
> I'll give an example which I think tells a lot about Lojban culture.
> I kind of feel like I'm revealing a secret, in a way-- I mean it's not
> secret at all, it's openly logged all the time in fact, but it's an
> open secret because it's encoded into a strange cypheric creature
> called a "lujvo". :)  The lujvo I'm thinking of is "cinsne", which is
> made from "cin" for "cinse", to be sexual, and "sne" for "senva", to
> dream, and means to have a wet dream.  It is increasingly common &
> traditional to say to someone who is heading off to bed from
> Lojbanistan: "ko cinsne" -- Have a wet dream!  (It's meant somewhat in
> jest, but not haha-funny, & it comes from a long shared strange
> Lojbanic sense of humor and absurdity.)
>
> So there has been some effect on my thinking from using a language
> that's so modular, adjustable, free, structural.  But there's been at
> least as much change in how I think from the cultural experience of
> living part of my life in a linguistic community that's there mostly
> for the purpose of exploring language itself, and with a language on
> their tongues and fingertips to bend to their whims and wills.  Loglan
> and Middle Lojban were similar to today's Lojban grammatically, but I
> think provoked a very different experience in those who related to
> them.  I would expect that the next generation's Lojban, which is
> growing out of the conversations and stories and songs and
> translations of today, will have yet again an entirely different
> effect on those who learn it.
>
> I suppose the main conclusion my studies of Lojban have driven me to
> about Sapir-Whorf is that language is not just a tool used by a
> society, but a vessel for much of the knowledge and social structure
> of a society.  It's that hidden dimension of language which I believe
> is most powerful in structuring how we think, act and live.
>
> <3,
> mungojelly
> AKA la stela selckiku
>