From mark@kli.org Mon Aug 07 11:44:50 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:44:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pi.meson.org ([66.134.26.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1GAA5j-0008EU-Ci for llg-members@lojban.org; Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:44:48 -0700 Received: (qmail 18600 invoked from network); 7 Aug 2006 18:44:40 -0000 Received: from nagas.meson.org (HELO ?192.168.1.101?) (1000@192.168.1.101) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 7 Aug 2006 18:44:40 -0000 Message-ID: <44D78A18.4070802@kli.org> Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:44:40 -0400 From: "Mark E. Shoulson" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: llg-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] Re: LLG 2006 Annual Meeting Thread References: <20060707224943.GB18983@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <20060807041126.GE28190@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <44D6D0E3.30801@lojban.org> <44D77A08.9080800@kli.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.4 (--) X-archive-position: 239 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mark@kli.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members Matt Arnold wrote: > You're right. All this is very true. But show is very important. Lots > of conlangers don't get into it for linguistic insight, they get into > it for allure. > [....] > > Imagine if I take this image: > http://www.nemorathwald.com/lojban/lojban_flag_furled.jpg > and tilt it; make an opposing one with the Klingon flag; and cross the > flags. Then you print a poster of this to promote a game show where > Lojbanists and Klingons compete in their ability to translate > sentences into their respective languages. I agree that the "show" is definitely important. More important to the non-committed than to the committed--but then, it's the unaligned out there that we're trying to get interested. People were excited about even the possibility of Klingon and Lojban face to face at the last one. But I don't like the idea of any sort of "competition," even for promotional purposes. Maybe especially for promotional purposes. The two languages are so different anyway, there's no way there could be a fair comparison (it's *much* harder to do a good translation into Lojban, for me anyway, simply because there are so many ways to say it and such high potential quality of expression in Lojban. In Klingon, if what you come up with isn't really quite right, that's okay because you're not likely to find something better. You can't really compare the two) And the impression it leaves in people's minds that this language "beat" that one... it's not helpful to the community (the Lojban community, the Klingon community, or the conlang community as a whole). Crossed flags might be nice, though. ~mark