Re: LUNATIC again

>And I thought lojbab had been using lojban for some while now.  And wasn't
>the (one of the) main aims of the original Loglan to test the Sapir-Whorf
>hypothesis?   Surely, if one can't even _think_ in the loglan, it can't
>shed any light on the hypothesis?
I cannot think in Lojban, nor can I think in Russian. It seems that my way of
learning languages (which is only mildly successful, since I am far short of
fluency in either, does not promote thinking in the language.

i can communicate as fast in Lojban as almost anyone, but only by speedy
in-my-head translation of English thoughts, and I have to translate what I
listen to completely in order to respond.  I don't need a dictionary, but I
don't think in the language either. But like I said, teh same is true for
my Russian.

I believe that others may be able to think in Lojban, but I can't.

>As many know I was pretty conversant with Latin for many years.  When
>reading Latin the meaning normally went straight from the Latin to the
>brain, so to speak, without any English intermediary.  Indeed, on many
>occasions I've been asked "What does that mean?"  I can understand the
>meaning immediately; but I can't come out with the English immediately.
>I'm thinking in Latin when I read it - I have to restructure my thoughts in
>a different pattern to get to grips with English.
None of which is true for me.  I switch between Lojban and English easily.
Likewise between Russian and English.  because I've never let go of the
English.

>I find if I start to get into a language, some thinking in that language
>does take place, tho the extent to which this happens varies somewhat.
The only extent that this is true for me for Lojban is that I generally identify
the grammatical frameowrk before translating it so that the realtionships
of thge words are clear before I actually identify what the words mean.
Likewise in Russian, I know what case each word is  in before I identify
what the word means; I know which conjugation of the verb, etc.  I essentially
treat each sentence I run into as a tarnslation exercise as if for homework.
I am never satisfied with less than perfection except when trying to converse
either, at least in Russian - I look up any word that is being used in even the
slightest unusual way to my current knowledge.

I admitthis is not a good way to learn a language.  But I haven't managed any
other.

>Now I guess lojbab must as familiar as any one is with lojban.
>The fact that he says: "I admit that the phenomenon of thinking in a
>different language remains beyond my understanding" seems to me quite
>suggestive.
>
>I wish to make it _ABSOLUTELY CLEAR_ that I am NOT trying to be sarcastic
>NOR trying to put down lojbab in saying this NOR to criticize or attack him
>in any way whatsoever.
Not taken as such.

>What I mean is that it does suggest to me that there is some qualitative
>difference between a conlang of the loglan type & a natlang and that, tho I
>wouldn't have put it quite the same way, Charles may be close to the mark
>in suggesting that lojban is rather an elaborate encoding of English.
For me, by the definitions I have given, it is.  But then we have native
speakers of othe rlanguages who are as comparably skilled in the
language as I am, so that would require that Lojban be encoded X, where X
is an arbitrary and variable natlang.

And no one would accuse Russian of being encoded English, merely because of
how I use it.  Yet I am pretty much as skilled in Russian as in Lojban.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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