From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Mar 29 01:49:30 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:49:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JfWkk-0004pG-8c for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:49:30 -0700 Received: from squid17.laughingsquid.net ([72.32.93.144]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JfWkd-0004os-PN for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:49:30 -0700 Received: (qmail 13439 invoked by uid 48); 29 Mar 2008 01:49:21 -0700 Received: from c-75-68-233-37.hsd1.vt.comcast.net (c-75-68-233-37.hsd1.vt.comcast.net [75.68.233.37]) by webmail.ixkey.info (Horde MIME library) with HTTP; Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:49:20 -0700 Message-ID: <20080329014920.dm1qilf2o8k40gwg@webmail.ixkey.info> Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:49:20 -0700 From: mungojelly@ixkey.info To: lojban-list@lojban.org, Adam Shepley Subject: [lojban] the illogic of Lojban References: <47BDD838.2060308@perpetuum-immobile.de> <527c832e0802221325s21201601j1bd24b365107cd7@mail.gmail.com> <47BF4559.4070303@perpetuum-immobile.de> <527c832e0802222040o139bbfc9taf7baef1b99ebb64@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <527c832e0802222040o139bbfc9taf7baef1b99ebb64@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.1.5) X-Spam-Score: 1.8 X-Spam-Score-Int: 18 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 14265 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mungojelly@ixkey.info Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Quoting Adam Shepley : ... > I have never tried to contact anyone regarding lojban because the extant > community struck me as basically inaccessible. I am not a language snob. I > opine that the majority of the oldest and most prolific amongst you are in > fact that. Linguistics *otaku* who are content to tinker and bicker about > minutiae while a genuinely valuable language moulders in obscurity. > > In the ckafybarja archive materials (which I have struggled through > for years) it is somewhat discussed that lojban requires a community: > I suggest that a de facto community has in fact grown around the > language already; a community which is unwittingly xenophobic. ... > The majority of posts seem to be an ongoing dialogue between a core group > of around 8 to 12 people. What, from my vantage point, could be described > as a clique. The first time I studied Lojban, more than a decade ago, I was too shy to say anything, being aware of the critical atmosphere in Lojbanistan. The second time I studied Lojban I talked a bit, but I was quickly scared off, not just by the negativity addressed at me, but by the general air of confusion & contention hanging over so many features of the language, which made me feel that it was unspeakable. I left Lojban then for a long time, but it haunted me. Grammatical features would float through my mind while I was showering. Words and phrases that I hadn't actually studied or used for years or ever were still hanging suspended in my mind, these unique shapes and structures that belong nowhere but Lojban. In the end I discovered that I love Lojban, and that my love of the language was strong enough to bring me back to try to rescue it. Now that I am more fluent in Lojban, I understand more clearly why it presents itself so terribly to newcomers. I don't think the negative atmosphere is necessary or inevitable, but I've gotten a sense for how it develops. Consider that Lojban is perhaps the first truly artificial language to be spoken by a community; Esperanto of course cheated by resting most of its grammar and semantics on a European foundation, but (on the level of grammar, at least) Lojban has truly been built ground up from first principles, even with a bit of rigor. For one thing, Lojban is a language so fantastically simple that it is possible to hold its full deep structure in your mind; that's a beautiful thing, but it also leads people to demand unreasonable sorts of correctness from newbies, and to teach them in incomprehensible unimmersive ways. The main way I believe that Lojban's uniqueness makes it inhospitable, though, is that it is still very unfinished. A few decades is a short time in the life of a language, after all (though I do believe that great progress has been made, even if it's not so apparent close up). Newbies constantly innocently ask questions that raise unresolved issues, even completely unexplored questions. This has historically been a language-invention society, not a language-education society, and naturally when interesting questions are raised people voice a cacophony of opinions, but naturally it's offputting to a newbie if what seems like a perfectly simple question (and what in a finished language would be perfectly a simple question) cannot get a simple answer. That's inescapable, though; many questions really cannot yet be answered well or answered at all; Lojban's not done. None of this excuses us as a community from overcoming such obstacles. To me an obvious first step is to draw a bright line between inward-facing language design (tinkering, experimentation, exploration), and outward-facing simplification and education. That's right, we should lower ourselves to the lie of simplification; don't respond to a simple question with a list of exceptions. I believe also that we ought to establish a taboo against unsolicited corrections: if someone says "mi cilre la lojban." (I learn Lojban, incorrectly phrased), we should say "mi gleki lo nu do cilre fi la lojban." (I'm happy you're learning about Lojban), positive reenforcement and providing a good model, not "Lojban can't be in the second place of cilre! The second place of cilre is a fact that's learned!", which is true but unhelpfully critical. We should also work on creating explicit structures to help ease new people into the language. One which seems like a nobrainer to me is to indicate to newbies which words (for instance, which of the gismu) to learn first, and then write & speak to newbies with a heavy emphasis on those words. I've been working on creating that sort of structure to help newbies into the language, and I've found it a surprising amount of work. Still, it's a shame that such things haven't been anyone's priority for so many years. It's only very recently that we've even had rudimentary things like simple illustrated books or vocabulary lists with pictures. So I think it's important to recognize and respect the tremendous amount of effort that's been put into Lojban over the years, while also attending to some perspectives which have been very neglected. I do believe that Lojban is changing, and is on the right course. I also think it is still a long hard road ahead-- certainly a very long road before Lojban is anywhere near as complete as a full natural language. My love of Lojban gives me the strength to keep tugging it along that long road, and to toss off the discouragements and criticisms that arise from its complicated past. ... > The much commoner (if less "superior") paradigm for community access on the > internet is the web based forum. There is, BTW, a perfectly active Lojban web forum: http://community.livejournal.com/lojban/ There's been a trickle of activity there forever, and I don't know why it's not taken seriously by the community. I'm an active Livejournal user myself anyway, so I'm not really aware how hard it is to get an account or whatever, is that the problem? Anyway I always follow that group and I encourage anyone to stop by. I don't expect these mailing lists to suddenly radically alter in either their structure or their vibe. And why should they? They've got a long-standing tradition, and they're not using up the whole internet. It's about time that Lojbanistan was larger than a couple of mailing lists, IMHO. If people would recognize the effort that's been put into establishing the Lojban Livejournal community, and consider it a real part of Lojbanistan, that would be a good start. ... > The dilemma, in my eyes, is that this was 20 years ago and today > *still *relatively few people have learned to speak lojban. Why is > that, I > wonders? I postulate that since language acquisition is a nontrivial > task which inherently requires human interaction, the (my?) perceived > lack of accessible community dissuades potential learners from > coming in. Community is essential for more than just transmitting a language; it is only in a community of speakers that a language exists. Lojban existed at first as a specification for a language, not a living language. There are innumerable ways in which communities could speak Lojban which would match the specification, while still being mutually incomprehensible! There is a living Lojban today. It is still a baby language-- it struggles and becomes as artificial & strained as it used to be if you try to force it to say complicated sophisticated things-- but it's used on IRC (the Freenode network, channel #lojban) every day comfortably at a basic level of conversation. Organic explorations of the language have begun to take place from inside. It's beautiful to me to see the simplest things in Lojban, to see people play with the shapes that expressions can take. There's still a few missing links between newbies and that living language which is just starting to emerge. I see newbies all the time on IRC being told not to take any of the learning materials seriously because they're all out of date! That must be pretty discouraging. But I believe we are getting there; I believe that those last few links can be forged, and Lojban can get the life it deserves. ... > I hope to check back in two years, or five years, and see the millionth > lojban speaker fluently joining the new, open lojban community. I pray that > I won't come back in 2028 to see the same twelve conlangers picking the same > grammatical nits they are today. Don't bother rejoining the mailing list, if it bugs you. It's a sort of language workshop, bits of grammar all over the cutting room floor, and that's probably how it's going to stay. But join us on IRC or Livejournal or the new Facebook groups or somewhere, won't you? Lojbanistan is getting bigger lately, things are happening, and Lojban is always developing. mu'o mi'e la bret. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.