Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?

(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

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