Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 06:29:40 -0500
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Message-Id: <199602081129.GAA18372@access1.digex.net>
To: cbogart@QUETZAL.COM
Subject: Re: CONLANG: How many planned languages have there been?
Cc: conlang@diku.dk
Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk
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Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Status: OR
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>Lojbab cusku di'e:
>>My own standard, expressed before, is far weaker than the linguistic one of
>>having native speakers.  i consider the equivlent of a native speaker
>>of a conlang to be someone other than the language inventor, who has learned
>>the language well enough to teach it to a person without intervention of
>>the inventor.
>
>As good a definition as any, but I think it's charming how the proponents of
>any conlang have definitions of "language" or "natlang" or "native speaker"
>or whatever that happen to just about exactly include theirs.  Esperanto is
>a natural language because it has a few native speakers, Lojban is a real
>language because person 2 has taught it to person 3, Ido is a living
>language because there's still a journal being published in it.


My point was that this has been my standard, including the 2 gneration 
requirement, for over 5 years.  I think I first came up with it back when
I first corresponded with Rick Harrison about his many language inventions,
back before Conlang list was started - that was snail mail correspondence.
At that point, Lojban was no where near meeting my own definition for a
"real language" - I had taught a first generation, and there was a draft
textbook that had been largely a failure in teaching the language indirectly.
Nrither Nick nor John Cowan was yet on the project, and Athelstan was
the most likely person to succeed in teaching the language to someone
without my assistance.

I came up with the atenrate definition of native speaker NOT to argue that
Lojban has native speakers, but rather to form an analogy with native speaking
for purposes of jusging competence in a language.  Competence in a language is
even more nebulous of course than whether it exists, although I should think 
that even if people find my definition too self-serving, they should agree
that a language really ought to have a competent speaker or two before you
can be really sure that it "works", since only competent speakers are
going to find the real holes in the design.

lojbab