From thinkit8@lycos.com Fri Nov 30 20:02:47 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 1 Dec 2001 04:02:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 89718 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2001 04:02:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 1 Dec 2001 04:02:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n21.groups.yahoo.com) (216.115.96.71) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 1 Dec 2001 04:02:47 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: thinkit8@lycos.com Received: from [10.1.10.122] by n21.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 01 Dec 2001 03:57:41 -0000 Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 04:02:40 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: To clarify... Message-ID: <9u9kp1+jtdc@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 2375 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 24.5.121.32 From: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Yahoo-Profile: thinkit41 X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 12419 --- In lojban@y..., "And Rosta" wrote: > Tinkit: > > --- In lojban@y..., "And Rosta" wrote: > [...] > > > It's interesting that there is such near-unanimity (among those > > > who care about design issues) that the morphology is a disaster > > > and that shorter gismu and no rafsi would have been a much better > > > solution. It's this sort of thing that leads me to believe that > > > had the development of Loglan/Lojban been allowed to be driven > > > primarily by design issues rather than by the wish to reach a > > > stable and usable form as quickly as possible, the language > > > would nonetheless have tended to progressively stabilize as > > > the optimal design -- objectively arrived at through the consensus > > > of rational minds -- was progressively approximated ever more > > > closely. > > > > Very interesting. My initial desire was to keep the morphology but > > redo the gismu, rafsi, and cmavo so the rafsi and cmavo could be > > regularly deduced from the gismu. Now this is sounding much better, > > but unfortunately lojban is sounding more broken :(. I think John > > Cowan mentioned that the morphology isn't even fully debugged, which > > further makes it seem in doubt. > > Any loglan that is to be sufficiently usable and stable to acquire > a community of users MUST perforce be 'broken' to some degree. New > ways will always be found to improve the language, however many > improvements you make. And both Lojban and Classical Loglan had > the declared aims of acquiring a community of users. Lojban has > never claimed to be perfect. It does, though, embody the fruits > of the labours of very many very intelligent minds, so even in > its 'broken' design it is nonetheless of great value. > > So yes, Lojban is 'broken', but this is by deliberate policy and > by the will of the vast majority of Lojbanists, and there is no > false advertising that claims anything to the contrary, so there > is no point in *complaining* about it. However, a minority of > Lojbanists are interested in design issues, so one can still > discuss purely hypothetical changes to the language. > > --And. Of course, everything is relative, nothing is perfect, and nobody is immortal. If I was a baby entering the world, I'd still pick lojban over English. It's still relatively better.