From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue May 19 16:28:41 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 19 May 2009 16:28:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1M6Yjh-00025i-Nj for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 19 May 2009 16:28:41 -0700 Received: from eastrmmtao103.cox.net ([68.230.240.9]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1M6Yje-00025I-Uf for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 19 May 2009 16:28:41 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo03.cox.net ([68.1.16.126]) by eastrmmtao103.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20090519232834.JXDB12338.eastrmmtao103.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> for ; Tue, 19 May 2009 19:28:34 -0400 Received: from [192.168.1.100] ([70.187.235.94]) by eastrmimpo03.cox.net with bizsmtp id tbUX1b00F22sj6m02bUYVB; Tue, 19 May 2009 19:28:33 -0400 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=GGho8freLLMA:10 a=CvEWtDRmorsA:10 a=PqTDF_D5AAAA:8 a=pGLkceISAAAA:8 a=vggBfdFIAAAA:8 a=9Kb0ubmVAAAA:8 a=HACsF1KUumRh-22iYLUA:9 a=f3zaJOkXJEfyBw5naTEA:7 a=YyV1mucEo6XJXUE0taiJLdtkbtcA:4 a=MSl-tDqOz04A:10 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4A1340B0.50809@lojban.org> Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 19:28:48 -0400 From: Bob LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: In the land of invented languages References: <12d58c160905191330v4cde1a21je7dc999f208a1a3b@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-archive-position: 15597 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Adam Raizen wrote: > Here is another (rather misguided) review: > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/15/RV7J17I5FA.DTL > > On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 23:30, komfo,amonan wrote: > >>coi ro do >>Those of you who attended the 2006 Logfest at Philcon may remember >>Arika Okrent, a linguist who was researching conlangs for a book. >>Well, the book appears today >>http://www.amazon.com/Land-Invented-Languages-Esperanto-Dreamers/dp/0385527888/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242764829&sr=1-2 >> >>& has already been reviewed by Language Hat >>http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003501.php Arika sent me a complimentary advance copy of the book last week, and Nora and I have gone through the section on "Logical Languages" - about 55 pages mostly about Loglan/Lojban, with side notes on Blissymbolics, Laadan, and maybe a couple of others. Those who were at the 2006 Philcon will recognize her description of that farce. Given the circumstances, I think her presentation was quite fair, and she got the pre-1990 history of the project down about as correctly as I think could be expected (she doesn't much talk about what has happened since then, but this may be in part because we haven't been putting out publications that document the ongoing project history); I wish she had mentioned more names besides Nora and mine among the key early Lojbanists. My main disagreement is that she took away from Philcon the impression that Lojban is harder to learn and to speak than it really is. She holds up the results of our ad hoc conversation efforts - all by self taught students who seldom have opportunities to speak the language, many of whom have no especial talent for languages in the first place. She also mentioned our discussion of a complex and abstract philosophical statement that she had tried to translate for herself. In my own email response to her, I noted that if you stuck a bunch of self-taught Russian students in a room, all of them at the 1st or 2nd year skill level, who don't know each other and have few interests in common other than the Russian that they have studied, and asked them to hold a conversation, sans dictionary, you would probably get no better results. And if you asked them ad hoc to translate an abstract philosophical statement about language under those conditions, they would have gotten nowhere at all. But even though I disagree with her conclusion, her observations are honest and reasonable, and her writing style is light and entertaining, knowledgeable, but not heavy in academese. I highly recommend the book to Lojbanists, and especially those interested in a variety of conlangs. lojbab 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.