From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Oct 24 22:20:41 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:20:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Ikv96-0002EZ-DL for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:20:40 -0700 Received: from web27704.mail.ukl.yahoo.com ([217.146.177.238]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Ikv93-0002EC-5n for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:20:39 -0700 Received: (qmail 56659 invoked by uid 60001); 25 Oct 2007 05:20:11 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.co.uk; h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Message-ID; b=uI/Fxtsi6qUQxiTl4ILC8n1z87tuA7L8rv4bARPPxg4PpBSoH6vPQwgKkbTdECga0QjLV/eWVK6Q6Gi4CsZbd6a2RZLDx7gXwwOGlWf7yiSBUtyg/9oIH6G+/rE4GFPb1qktvPh+c1usyD61SzkUCrJXB+KEuehzw2Crx+3Oa4k=; X-YMail-OSG: 91h54GAVM1n93WC.UMfWT_cFud642zPuexLI8Nw3v30tS5zXPqPmoeuCAmzCosMgjZL15pH_l.LzNvbRfKqIRGCteCvxJBjTSQ-- Received: from [130.239.156.94] by web27704.mail.ukl.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:20:11 GMT Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:20:11 +0000 (GMT) From: Isen hand Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: usefulness To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Message-ID: <302817.55686.qm@web27704.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5596 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: isenhand@yahoo.co.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners just to add my pennies worth. Lojban is more than just the people on the list or in any of the official groups. I know a few people around where I live who have started learning lojban but are not part of any list or group about lojban. Unfortunately non of us have reached appoint where we can actually use the language in day to day conversations but we are working on it. I suspect that there may well be more people around the world learning lojban than anyone here knows of. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jared Angell To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Sent: Wednesday, 24 October, 2007 3:14:07 PM Subject: [lojban-beginners] usefulness I am having a problem understanding the usefulness of a language that no one actually is conversing in verbally. I seriously think that if Lojban isn't to be stillborn than steps have to be taken to get people speaking it and thinking in it. Merely having a cool, well structured grammar whose lexicon was formed from a groovy algorithm and which is totally logical on paper doesn't mean that an actual language exists, IMHO. I really liked the idea of Lojban but at my present level of involvement I see no point in carrying on with it if it is never going to be anything more than a code that an extremely low percentage of the Internet population uses to play mental games with one another. Which is, forgive me, exactly what it is at the moment. I see absolutely no reason why a well thought out English or even Esperanto sentence cannot convey the same ideas as a Lojban sentence. It is true that complex philosophical, mathematical, and physics ideas are more easily expressed in Lojban but that statement is based on the assumption that a person could actually think in Lojban which it appears that no one does, or maybe half a dozen currently do to a very limited extent. When Ben Yehuda created the modern Hebrew partially constructed language the way that language came to life was by gathering people willing to speak it together. The next step in the Lojban process should not be, with apologies to the LLG, to let it evolve, but rather, to see to it that people are speaking it in communities. And I feel that this is not such a lofty goal. I feel that if key members of linguistics departments all over the world were shown the inherit value of Lojban than classes in it could commence within a year and people would begin learning and using this language academically. This may be happening and I am unaware of it but from what I can tell Lojban is not growing at a sufficiently fast rate to survive. Which is a shame, Lojban has a great deal to offer. But I have to question the motivations of anyone on this list if they are just learning a language to type to perhaps 1000 in on their spare time. For those of you who have no academic interests but who feel as I do I would suggest teaching Lojban to your families or opening up a night course in your local area where you teach Lojban after you yourself have learned it to a certain degree. Personally, I feel that the software that teaches us Lojban is only useful to a limited extent and I think I'll be putting together a home study course by creating new software and making study CD's with Lojban selbri on them. I'm hoping the combined effect will be such that even someone like myself that has a hard time with language will be able to pick up this language. This would greatly improve the learning time for Lojban and therefore allow those who randomly find the website and are interested like myself to learn Lojban and them go out and teach it as per my suggestion. I'm sending this message on this medium for two reasons: 1. is that I feel that this is the proper audience seeing as how all the 'fresh meat' is here; 2. My experience with the leading elements of the Lojban community is that they have given all that they can give and they are burnt out, tired, out or time, and grumpy that someone else doesn't take up the torch already. If the LLG were doing a better job than Lojban would be something that was at least showing up on slashdot and talked about in certain academic circles. As far as I can tell the only people outside of the rather small Lojban community that know of the language are Esperanto speakers - and only a small number of them. It is a shame that only the crafters of this rather amazing tool are the ones who utilize it for the crafters of a tool are known to only use a tool as it was intended and not for anymore. It is well known that tools usually can be used for more uses than they were intended, is it not? I have heard it argued that the reason that there are so few texts yet translated into Lojban is that it is so 'other-worldly'. I think this is a terribly crafted excuse for a language with such a small and totally voluntary user-base that it is incapable of getting reading materials produced or translated. Without reading material this language is nothing. Things are not not getting translated into Lojban because of the difficulty level. Things are not getting translated into Lojban because the only people who are just fluent enough to translate them do not have the time because they are not being compensated for it. If people were in a Lojban community where Lojban culture could develop and children grew up speaking Lojban (it would be Utopia probably) then translating things and writing things in Lojban would be as trivial as it was to translate thing from a multiplicity of languages into Modern Hebrew when the state of Israel was founded. What Lojban really REALLY needs a a millionaire to sponsor it. Lojban need visibility. Lojban needs marketing. People need to know about this language...less than 1% of 1% of the Internet populous is aware of this language from my calculations...how much of the world is that? I mean if the slashdot community isn't even aware of Lojban (and where is there a more perfect place to recruit potential speakers than slashdot) then who is? Lojban T-shirts on thinkgeek is also a possibility to look into...is anyone aware of anywhere on the next where you can even find pre-printed Lojban memorabilia??? That said, does anyone have an idea for how you would say 'geodesic dome' in Lojban? -- Jared "There is no emotion, there is peace; there is no ignorance, there is knowledge; there is no passion, there is serenity; there is no death, there is the Universe" "Work smart when you can and hard if you must" "When a system is corrupt then it's time for a reformat" "Open Source: The light side of computing. It's never too late to join" ___________________________________________________________ Want ideas for reducing your carbon footprint? Visit Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/environment.html