From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Oct 19 02:22:58 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 19 Oct 1992 10:10:49 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2422; Mon, 19 Oct 92 10:09:02 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 3384; Mon, 19 Oct 92 10:09:01 EDT Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1992 06:22:58 -0400 Reply-To: "(Logical Language Group)" Sender: Lojban list From: "(Logical Language Group)" Subject: GENERAL: Daddy Lojbab is Back, More or Less (mostly less) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: I have returned a week early from Russia, with two wonderful children. The adoption went especially quickly, and I was strongly urged to get back to the US more quickly so that the children would bond with their mother, rather than every other female that assisted me in helping take care of them the last week (which they seemed to be starting to do). All my work on Russian was not nearly enough, and I will have to continue studying for quite a while in order to be able to truly speak the language. My kids will probably speak English fluently long before I speak Russian communicatively on other than the most basic topics; perhaps they will speak Lojban fluently before then as well %^) Lojban got a bit of a boost from my trip: Ivan's trabslation of the Lojban brochure will be published in a "Transactions" journal in Russia, I think the "Trabsactions of the Society of Eastern and Oriental Languages" or something like that - I'll post good biblio info when I have it available. This will be the FIRST academic publication about the Loglan project other than book reviews, which don;t really count (I doubt that many scholars consider Scientific American sufficently schoalrly to have it count in Loglan's favor, and having scholarly publications is important in seeking grants, etc.) On Friday I presented a 'seminar' on Lojban (basically a short talk with question-answering) to about 20 people at Moscow State University Dept. of Philology and Linguistics. Three professors, Mikhail Maron who arranged the talk, and the rest primarily grad students who are studying theoretical linguistics and were also taking a 'practical English' class, whose teacher saw this as a good opportunity. But the students seemed genuinely interested, and the professors as well, most especially the department chairman, Professor Polikarpov, who I will be having further discussions with via email. All-in-all there were many regrets that I could not stay longer in Moscow and arrange f further discussions, but the purpose of the trip was primarily for the kids, and they most certainly had to come first in my planning. I also had discussions with the Academician leading Russia's efforts in machine translation. Some interest there, but their problem right now is financial - they have to find a way to commercialize (i.e. attract Western money), and there is little likelihood that we are going to be able to help in that. I will be keeping a low profile here for at least a few more weeks. Other than minimally reading mail, my major Lojban activity will be putting out JL17 and LK17. Until those are done, don;t expect to see much of me. And given that I will be practicing being a daddy, a very new experience, my Lojban time will probably be fairly low anyway. (Long-term, after the kids start going to school in a month or two, I am hoping that my productivity will be the same or greater than it has been the last few months. Some may say that this is not a very ambitious goal %^) lojbab