Subject: A wide variety of comments...

From: Robin Lee Powell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 03:24:07 -0500

Hello, all. I have little to say on lojban itself, as I haven't really
managed to learn it (or even tried that hard, of which more anon). I
do, however, have some thoughts on various things surrounding the
language.

1. I'll start with the one that is most likely to piss people off. :-)
For the purposes of meme propogation, what do people think of the idea
of going through the (apparently fairly easy[1]) process of getting a
Paramount license and making a 'Vulcan dictionary' that is actually
lojban? The fact that it would utterly fail to match in sound the stuff
in the movies can be handled quite easily by supposing that the Vulcans
had something like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and when they decided to
no longer be bloodythirsty violent types, made up a new language. Since
90% of the vulcan we hear in the shows/movies is from ancient rituals,
problem solved.

Note that if people actually _like_ this idea, I would be _more_
than happy to write said book, soliciting/taking input as nescessary, of
course.

2. I have no interest in learning a language from dictionaries, lesson
books, and the like. None. Zilch. Nada. I want to learn it by using
it in conversation, dammit!

To that end, I would like to see lojbanists using some kind of
real-time conversation to teach each other the language in actual
conversation. I would be happy to point people to space on the mud I
run specifically for this. Ecstatic, actually. IRC is another option.
There are lots. The main thing is that I think that most of us would
learn the language _much_ faster if we had a reason and a venue to use
it conversationally. Not only that, but such a venue would provide
instant ideas and criticism on translations.

Something voice-based like that at http://www.paltalk.com/ would
also rock, but would probably work better if there was a set time for
people to meet.

3. It would probably take me about a minute to sort the list at
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/gismutot.html in english-equivalent
word order. Will the people at that site take something like that?

4. Has anyone got the gismu palm program to work on the Palm III or
thereabouts?

5. I find http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/ to be a much easier to
use/nicer to look at (in both Netscape and lynx) site than
http://www.lojban.org/ (no offense intended, lojbab). Is it just me?

Phew. I think that's it for now.

-Robin

[1]: No, this is _not_ a reference to the Klingon Dictionary[2]. It's a
reference to some of the computer games and novel that have been
published under that license.

[2]: Although the KD is why I'm here. I've always liked conlangs ever
since I found Tolkien's, but I had no interest in fleshing out Tolkien's
stuff (although I think the Tegwar for lojban is one of the most
beautiful things I've ever seen). I read the KD, and started to learn
it a bit, and then I thought to myself, "You know, the kill-things-
eat-them-and-take-their-stuff meme (along with the 'violent honor' and
'noble savage' memes) really has _WAY_ too much airtime in the human
brain already. A Vulcan dictionary would have been _so_ much nicer, at
least if it was done rigorously. And it's a good venue for meme
propogation, obviously. Maybe if it caught on people would start being
_less_ violent and rude to each other instead of more so". So I started
thinking about design ideas. But first I thought to check to see if
someone else had done a logical language (or a Vulcan language, for that
matter). Lo and behold, there were several, most of them much more
fleshed out than I could ever make them. I looked for the one with the
most chance of developing an actual _speaking_ community, and here I am.

-- 
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest.
As a member of the Hans Solo School of Action Before Thought, Welcome,
You've Got Male.