New blog post! In which I think aloud about how cool it'd be to have interactive fiction to play in #Ido and #Occidental: On Interactive Fiction and Language-Learning
@Sandra I wasn't aware of any controversy over the much more common name, is the short answer… if there is some background I should know, please do share 😬
Long-ish reply about Occidental
@Sandra Well, I hadn't heard much about alt-rightists' use of the words but I think that's unrelated from this. My understanding is that early Occidentalists (1920s & 30s) did express racist attitudes in line with other Europeans of the era, but modern Occidentalists don't support that, and kind of go "eek yuck" at those kinds of comments in the archives. The language renamed itself to Interlingue at the very tail end of its original "life", for basically spurious reasons. It's been revived from essentially nothing in the last few years, and those speakers prefer the name Occidental basically for not purposely treading on the toes of Interlingua, as well as just more accurately describing what it's an interlanguage between (Romance langs & English – in a modern context where IALs get criticised for not drawing evenly from the languages of the world unless they lampshade it, seemingly). Hope that makes sense, I've been bombarded with distractions while trying to type this reply haha 😂 But basically Occidental is overwhelmingly the modern name and I haven't got racist vibes from its community, although ofc after my disgust at the Ido FB group I'm staying alert