Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 12:35:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710241735.MAA00265@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2394 Lines: 44 bob@megalith.rattlesnake.com wrote: > Are you practicing using exercises written for the *Dvorak* keyboard? Yes, I am. Available at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jcb/Dvorak/dvorak-course/ I was interested to see that I'm not the only one on this mailing list using these particular lessons. (No, the "jcb" in the URL is not "James Cooke Brown".) Ron Kuris wrote: > > Does anybody on this list happen to have an amateur radio license? > > Just curious. > > I do. KE6SHF. I was just curious because it seemed to me that if a lot of us were, it might be interesting to set up meetings on HF to allow realtime communication and also spoken rather than written Lojban to be used. I don't know of any other form of communication that would be practical to allow several people in geographically remote locations to communicate in realtime by voice for no (or little) money. I don't know of any Internet programs that would allow this, either. As far as I know, Internet phones work only between two people (though I may be mistaken). For me personally, any amateur-Lojban communications would have to wait until a future date, partly because I don't have any HF gear (though I will be learning how to build such gear sometime in the next couple years), and partly because I need to spend at least a few months learning enough Lojban to communicate effectively in realtime. But it is something I would like to do sometime in the future. BTW, my call is KD4JTV. On a different topic: I am quite concerned by the recent discussion on this list about the difference in opinion about what certain phrases mean in Lojban. Although I'm not able to follow the specifics (yet), it appears that it is not at all obvious what certain phrases mean, particularly when relating to abstractions (but again, I don't have a clue what the specific ideas being discussed are). All I'm understanding right now that there are ideas which should be simple to express, but are not in fact easy to express in Lojban. Well I currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can express anything I want. It might be awkward, but I can express it. The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will be easier and more logical. If the language doesn't do this, then it has no advantage over English. What's going on here? --Andrew