From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Jun 17 05:48:13 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 17 Jun 2005 06:11:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1DjGGa-0005vG-U8 for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:48:13 -0700 Received: from snowdon.metacarta.com ([66.92.95.163] helo=metacarta.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1DjGGW-0005v9-01 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:48:12 -0700 Received: from localhost (jackson.metacarta.com [66.92.95.183]) by metacarta.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 421C051810E for ; Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:48:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from metacarta.com ([66.92.95.163]) by localhost (jackson.metacarta.com [66.92.95.183]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 16505-08 for ; Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:48:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.32.0.21] (baxter.metacarta.com [10.32.0.21]) by metacarta.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B28B9518103 for ; Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:48:04 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <42B2C684.1060904@ropine.com> Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:48:04 -0400 From: Seth Gordon User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (X11/20040530) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] introduction Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 (Debian) at metacarta.com X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 1518 X-Approved-By: jkominek@miranda.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: sethg@ropine.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners coi rodo... Every few months, I get the urge to read about Lojban. With a three-year-old and a ten-month-old at home, I don't have much time for studying--once I think I have Lojban tense/aspect markers down pat, I will bore you all with practice sentences involving {cifnu} and {sipna}--but at least with this list I can keep my hand in. Robin, thanks for giving me a way to join the list without dealing with Yahoo Groups. A little about myself: I do programming for Metacarta, a startup in Cambridge (MA, USA) that makes a search engine for geographic data. I have a blog at http://dynamic.ropine.com/yo/ that gets updated far less often than I would like (see "don't have much time", above). I used to speak passable Spanish and ASL, although I haven't practiced either in a few years. I read classical Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic at the level of "if I torture the page for long enough, it will usually confess". I'm interested in Lojban for two contrasting reasons: (1) the rigorous formal design gives it potential as a medium for human-computer communication; (2) the range of relationships that can be expressed concisely (due to all the cmavo) gives it potential as a literary language. mu'o mi'e seldud [cf Genesis 4:25--is this correct?]