europidgin | Re: What attracted me to LFN
Hi Ed,
Thanks for all the nice things you write about Lingua Franca Nova.
But I think you also have a few misunderstandings. LFN is not a "neutral" language. It's European and it doesn't claim to be a "Neutral World Language". That is why an isolating grammar and non-european lexical material was a bit too strange for an European Pidgin Language.
I started this group a couple of weeks ago. And I tell you I have learned a lot about all the problems in connection with IALs in these few weeks.
Although I made it very clear from the beginning that the main goal of this group was and is to establish a community of people speaking LFN/EP. I as a good democrat allowed discussions about improvements of LFN.
But before I knew what was happening the discussions was about the merits of differnt languages, different grammars etc. Then an on and on going discussion for and against the use of English in this group, then followed by suggestions that we should do something against the war on Iraq. Then something that looked like demands on equal rights to use Spanish in the group. How many languages do I have to learn before I can get on with learning LFN??? And finally something that to me seemed to be hatred against "Anglos" whatever that is exactly.
After a little while people, who seem to share my goals and my views, got tired and left the group.
As a good democrat I created a poll which gave a majority, small but still a majority, for the original LFN or LFN with the same but simpler grammar. So I'm not behaving like a dictator in any way. I just try to follow the result of the poll.
Personally I have absolutly nothing against other IALs. I just like LFN most. I have nothing against language design as a hobby. And I have nothing against political discussions. But I didn't made this group to discuss language design or political matters.
I made the group to get together with some people who would try somthing completely new and really revolutionary within the community of people interested in IALs, Auxlangs, or whatever it's called, namely to learn and use an IAL for communication.
Best regards.
Bjorn