From lojban+bncCN673cmqFBC69pPwBBoEkI-DjA@googlegroups.com Fri Jun 24 14:02:03 2011 Received: from mail-vx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.220.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QaDVl-00052W-3D; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:02:02 -0700 Received: by vxg38 with SMTP id 38sf1585290vxg.16 for ; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:50 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:x-beenthere:received-spf:x-ct-score:x-ct-refid :x-ct-spam:x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from :organization:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject :references:in-reply-to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=li12hK60AaSQDLZrvo9V9T2KDeHainfHr7OzQRqEYWI=; b=Ozlms3VGC539nYRPIYrlxwb6rmJN6pwuwx5a4YrzXZ6e9ICVGeSe5xCuXMD+qx+CaD RXOTmj28x4DTiSOawBbyh9ox4Iet47yE0u96xfw73vbm5GbT852Qqgzxwfw/rx6L/Z2b 7zzLOU/pJTt0+4m7ofo/dwrgXY72FnXU09DGo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-ct-score:x-ct-refid:x-ct-spam :x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from:organization :user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:x-original-sender:x-original-authentication-results :reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=hvctuAdzcJCP7sB79HyZB/ACmyTrOeXChlNKWIS4hDq2rglCAxrIoktyANJYT/GYRv FldQldj4LH/PU9KXHF9pN0ger2Q8U9vOGH76iSUzOj97fNR+O4WUuh3rEv7S+WOy5wPx FegPTU2iqeu0GIceWwzscihGXIeI8/rP8Fsk8= Received: by 10.220.97.149 with SMTP id l21mr384476vcn.59.1308949306502; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:46 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.52.96.197 with SMTP id du5ls1477549vdb.1.gmail; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.174.169 with SMTP id bt9mr1426582vdc.5.1308949305806; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.174.169 with SMTP id bt9mr1426581vdc.5.1308949305798; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmfepo201.cox.net (eastrmfepo201.cox.net [68.230.241.216]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id a10si2490731vdt.0.2011.06.24.14.01.44; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:01:44 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 68.230.241.216 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) client-ip=68.230.241.216; Received: from eastrmimpo03.cox.net ([68.1.16.126]) by eastrmfepo201.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.01.04.00 201-2260-137-20101110) with ESMTP id <20110624210143.TLIU32549.eastrmfepo201.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> for ; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:01:43 -0400 Received: from [192.168.0.101] ([70.187.237.100]) by eastrmimpo03.cox.net with bizsmtp id zx1f1g0062AfMYu02x1fNs; Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:01:43 -0400 X-CT-Score: 0.00 X-CT-RefID: str=0001.0A020203.4E04FB37.010B,ss=1,re=0.000,fgs=0 X-CT-Spam: 0 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=OhYZZJQXoR+7iZIjJySXqJWBycBu9JOn5S2FHcwmPZQ= c=1 sm=1 a=dYDkaTZZu5wA:10 a=Z2S9-5uVzOQA:10 a=xmHE3fpoGJwA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=MQZuvjT3xUZLKv0gclfWMg==:17 a=8YJikuA2AAAA:8 a=Hs3-m2210suJUVEOG_wA:9 a=R82VPnnvuGTkBi9V5rcA:7 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=dxBpO5_FDU0A:10 a=MQZuvjT3xUZLKv0gclfWMg==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4E04FB5D.6060600@lojban.org> Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:02:21 -0400 From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc. User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: How it should have been. And how it could be. References: <29196995.3720.1308911034228.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqie9> In-Reply-To: <29196995.3720.1308911034228.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqie9> X-Original-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 68.230.241.216 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) smtp.mail=lojbab@lojban.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Muhammad Nael wrote: > -I was asked at school to work on a /complete/ short story to submit by > the beginning of next year, that is the soon-to-come reason for the > question. The same story but with different characters, plot and ending > (hard to swallow!) exists currently as a draft on my PC, and that is the > long-term reason for the same question. Being an SF story in the future, > I was curious about how the current Lojban community see the future of > Lojban, or what would they change if they're going to start an entirely > new project based (or not) on Lojban as a template. Being one of those with the "vision" to reform Lojban as a split from the TLI language, I would have to doubt that a redesigned Lojban would be the basis for a community. Slightly more plausible might be a space colony or something that adopted Lojban as the common language, but there is no especial reason why the language would be reformed for that purpose. Designing a language of the scale of Lojban from scratch is a BIG project. We've been at it for almost 25 years if you ignore the 30 years spent on Loglan before that. And the ONLY impetus we had for starting over were the policies and legal threats from language inventor JCB. "Building a better Lojban" simply isn't enough. And building a "better" Lojban than we have now would be harder than the time, because we've set the bar higher. The one other impetus I can imagine is a large funding source (which you asked about anyway). Getting funding for any sort of artificial language project "from scratch" would be extremely difficult. JCB tried and got one small NIMH grant in the early 60s, but no one even knows what it was for, and the language while then rudimentary wasn't restarting from scratch. It is plausible that someone with a particular application in mind might seek (and pay for) a specialized revision of Lojban in order to achieve a specific goal. Another guy and I proposed seeking funding from Reagan's SDI "Star Wars" initiative to do some sort of Loglan application, but JCB was rabidly anti-Reagan and anti-militaristic and rather vehemently and colorfully buried that idea in about 20 seconds. Of course, it is pretty impossible to figure what would be different in such a funded language project, since it would completely depend on whatever application was being paid for, and the constraints of the requirements. A German has proposed using Lojban as the basis for the European patent system. Such a purpose would tend to promote certain aspects of the language over others, in the need for specialized technical and legal terminology and the desire to avoid cultural artifacts and ambiguous semantics. No redesign was contemplated, but such adoption would probably bring about some funding to produce the necessary materials, and producing them would undoubted skew the language in certain directions. This would be evolutionary based on what the language is now, not a redesign - no "real" application would pay for a redesign that would take longer and not necessarily produce anything more usable. So the best way to project Lojban into the future is to think in language evolution terms. Imagine such a space colony as I mentioned, and presume that the colony is populated largely by people with Arabic and other Asian languages rather than the primarily English-centric group that dominates the language now. How might they use the language differently, for communications commonality among peoples of a very different set of language heritages and cultures - say Arabic, Hindu, Farsi, or pan-Africa - adopting Lojban because it is neutral between those cultures. Different cultures and the novel environment would each lead to demands on the language that we cannot foresee, and the non-inclusion of Americans or English speakers might lead evolutionary forces to avoid anything that seems like an English-language artifact or borrowing. But that kind of extrapolation isn't easy, and it would be driven by a lot of thought about how the community speaking it would differ from any present Lojban community, and what sort of cultural attitudes they might have towards what had gone before. And I am still talking evolution rather than redesign. From the standpoint of stories, I do want to call your attention to the fact that Loglan was in fact used as the basis for writings by at least three SF writers. JCB himself wrote a science fiction utopian novel, in which Loglan was the common language. Robert Rimmer (most known for "The Harrad Experiment") in the early 70s wrote a different utopian novel again with Loglan as the spoken language. And noted SF author Robert Heinlein twice mentioned Loglan in passing as being a language used for humans to talk to sentient computers, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and (IIRC) Friday. But nothing in these novels suggested anything was different from the then-current version of the language. (Heinlein's concept was more limited than what we actually achieved). (There have been other writers who have communicated with me about using Lojban in science fiction stories or movies, at least one of whom was a published author, but none of them have communicated with me that they finished anything, so I have no idea how they might have conceived the language). > -I looked at the visual alphabet, and I think it would be an awful idea > to try implementing it as is; its letters can so easily be confused if > you put them as clusters, if you put them as individual components then > you're asking the beginners to learn the science of morphology; and if > they pronounce a letter different from the original pronunciation, > Lojban loses its unique sound-to-letter mapping. In a word, I'd > Tolkien's /tengwar/ over Graham Bell Sr.'s /visual alphabet/, bearing in > mind that I recommend neither. > I have to go, will follow up. A lot of people have talked about different visual representations of Lojban, but until the current concept of the keyboard disappears, I don't think that the Roman alphabet could be displaced. Other than aesthetics, there is too little advantage to any change (remembering that even alternate keyboards like the Dvorak keyboard which are objectively much better than the standard QWERTY version used in the US can't gain a significant following). Actually, I think that analogy works for the language itself in your project described above. You need to postulate a reason why a new language version would displace the status quo, and being "better" simply isn't good enough. Hope all this is helpful. lojbab -- Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.