Subject: Re: [lojban] A wide variety of comments...

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 15:39:48 -0500

At 03:24 AM 03/18/2000 -0500, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>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?

I doubt that it would be easy to get a license. The original stuff was 
done under contract and the KLI had to work for a while to get things set 
up to allow much of anyone other than Mark O. to publish about 
Klingon. But Mark Shoulson can probably comment on this better than anyone 
since he is a published Klingonist. Mark?

In any event, if there was such a license, it would have to be such that it 
would not constrain use of Lojban in any way when not labelled as "Vulcan", 
and I doubt that Paramount would buy that idea.

>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.

We've had IRC conversations regularly at LogFest time, and someone once had 
an IRCbot that would support such conversation with word lookups. Go for it.

>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.

I of course welcome this. If people keep logs (and send them in for 
archival), all the better.

>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?

We published gismu lists in English order, but once the draft dictionary 
file was complete, it more than supplanted such list. The gismu English 
keywords are simply too sparse and ill-connected in meaning to the Lojban 
gismu to use them as the basis for translation, when there is a better 
(albeit much longer) alternative.

If there is demand, we can put one up.

>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?

We'll see what others say. The reason for redoing www.lojban.org was that 
1) people reported that the Helsinki site was hard to use and find things 
on, and 2) Veijo has not had time to update it often, and due to security 
concerns only he can do the work.
If you like that site better, tell us why, and if others agree, we can 
include some of the features. So far, other than some criticism of colors 
and a request that I break up the roadmap file so that it is faster-loading 
from the main page, I have seen little in suggestions for improvement (I 
will now expect to be inundated %^).

lojbab
----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)