From robin@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Fri Feb 19 07:44:13 1999 X-Digest-Num: 65 Message-ID: <44114.65.260.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:44:13 +0200 From: Robin Turner > Lojban itself makes me want to engage in flights of fantasy about the people > who would speak such a language -- a la Tolkien. You could almost write a > novel inspired by the language. > Well, one of my looooong-term projects is a philosophical novel with three characters (all of whom are basically aspects of myself). One is a philosophy lecturer who is having problems expressing her own philosophy, one's an English teacher with a hang-up about modal verbs (c.f. General Semantics) and one's a tantric yogini looking for a culturally neutral mysticism. They meet up at a course in guess which language? I'm not doing any work on it at the moment, partly because I hardly have enough time to keep up with my masses of e-mail, let alone write a novel, and partly because I doubt if anyone outside this list would want to read it. > > Another thing that I'd love to see, and perhaps eventually write in Lojban, > is a major philosophical work. It seems Lojban would be uniquely suited to > that. {.iecai} Some time back I considered rewriting my ongoing theory of everything in Lojban, but found that so much of what I'd written was taken up with redefining concepts that are inadequatley expressed in English that there wouldn't be much left! {pe'i} you really have to start from scratch. > Also, I'd like to write some Lojban poetry, and some Lojban myths -- > perhaps related to a long-dead tribe that once spoke Lojban. > {zo'o} Why did they die out? Invasion by Loglanders? > > In a language I created, it had a non-Roman alphabet in which the letters > made up a divination system a la runes. The letters were also related to > physical objects which facilitated a memory peg list. Also, each letter was > related to a particular physical movement, so you could generate a "kata" -- > a pre-defined set of movements a la karate -- out of any sentence. There > were a number of other associations as well, making the alphabet something > similar in many way to the Sephira and paths of the Kabalistic Tree of Life. > Go for it - synaesthesia rules! > > These days, it seems quite possible to have a Lojban tribe -- people with a > common culture and language but with no specific territory. A cyber-nation, > if you will... > Looking at the extreme variety of people on this list, a common culture would be pretty problematic! We've got right-wing libertarians, left-wing libertarians, scientists, mystics, poets .... you name it! The only common theme seems to be the Vulcan motto "infinite diversity in infinite combinations". [cut] > > As I've said before, I think it's still early days for Lojban - we need to do > > a lot more on seeing how the language works _in practice_ before getting into > > the mass market (if there ever is to be a mass market for conlangs, that is). > > IMO, the way for any language to become accepted is for it to find a niche. > Once that niche is found, it builds it up and expands it. If a couple > people start publishing interesting works in Lojban, this will pique > interest considerably -- especially if the work is still profound and > interesting when translated to other languages. Imagine a popular novel > that was written /first/ in Lojban. Don't you think that would pique a lot > of interest? Imagine if Tolkien's works had been written first in Lojban? {.iecai} Just needs people with the talent and time to do it all. > > Similarly, Klingon is big because it has a fascinating culture to go with > it. > {do drani .iku'ibo} Lojban is intended to be culturally neutral, so we've got a problem there! > > What is needed is some great writing in Lojban which then migrates to the > larger culture and has a big impact. What if a work a la the Tao te Ching > were written in Lojban and translated? Yes, but first we need a Lojban Laozi! {zo'o} and remember what the old boy said: {le cusku na'e djuno .i le djuno na'e cusku} co'o mi'e robin.