Received: from localhost ([::1]:37157 helo=stodi.digitalkingdom.org) by stodi.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.86) (envelope-from ) id 1aVli8-0004ej-8A; Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:55:00 -0800 Received: from eastrmfepo103.cox.net ([68.230.241.215]:38973) by stodi.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.86) (envelope-from ) id 1aVli2-0004df-Ls for llg-members@lojban.org; Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:54:59 -0800 Received: from eastrmimpo209 ([68.230.241.224]) by eastrmfepo103.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.01.05.15 201-2260-151-145-20131218) with ESMTP id <20160216195448.NSGQ30397.eastrmfepo103.cox.net@eastrmimpo209> for ; Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:54:48 -0500 Received: from [192.168.0.102] ([72.209.244.98]) by eastrmimpo209 with cox id K7uo1s0032869s8017uod9; Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:54:48 -0500 X-CT-Class: Clean X-CT-Score: 0.00 X-CT-RefID: str=0001.0A020204.56C37E88.0153,ss=1,re=0.000,fgs=0 X-CT-Spam: 0 X-Authority-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=a87uAzuF c=1 sm=1 a=JFEMeGVUNR3hGa77igez4Q==:17 a=Ksel_EskuoGJV0nKQToA:9 a=pILNOxqGKmIA:10 a=zceHTDbHmn43HBeI:21 a=wP7wN0wGS6codDt5:21 a=JFEMeGVUNR3hGa77igez4Q==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Authentication-Results: cox.net; none To: llg-members@lojban.org References: <563CBDA4.5080308@selpahi.de> <4E514785-A922-4D75-B34A-EFB3880C5712@gmail.com> <566701E3.4060408@lojban.org> <566CD949.7010504@lojban.org> <5671E710.2020407@lojban.org> From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc. Message-ID: <56C37E88.4030000@lojban.org> Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:54:48 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.5.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: X-Spam-Score: -1.9 (-) X-Spam_score: -1.9 X-Spam_score_int: -18 X-Spam_bar: - Subject: [Llg-members] International lojban community issues (was Re: 2015 Annual Meeting) X-BeenThere: llg-members@lojban.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Reply-To: llg-members@lojban.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Errors-To: llg-members-bounces@lojban.org Response to older message exchange On 12/17/2015 2:00 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote: guskant: > As for that topic, I abandoned to reply to Gleki because I realized > that Gleki has too little knowledge of philosophy for us to continue > the discussion on the thread; I think it would be better return to the > topic after I finish my commentary on the philosophical and logical > basis of the design of Lojban. > > I made that modification because it didn't explain any philosophy. But I > of course approve of any new explanations of e.g. Quine's "observation > sentences". Anything official commenting on the philosophical and logical basis of the design really isn't a byfy topic. The original design was by JCB, and in a sense only he could speak as to the basis of the design. I and a couple of others can speak of the basis for the design of things that differ from JCB's language, but I don't pretend to be a philosopher, so one might not find my statements "explaining any philosophy". So maybe it is best said that there was no serious attempt at Lojban having a coherent philosophical basis. We had goals, and a few principles that we followed. > Well, that is a problem to be solved by byfy itself. > The problem to be discussed here is to confirm how the current > modifications on the next version of CLL is going to be official. By the current policy, the byfy jatna will report to the Board and/or the membership, and one or the other will decide (depending on timeliness - the membership isn't constantly in meeting. > > Since it should be clear by now that I am timewise and healthwise not > > capable of managing everything or even most things that LLG does, it is > > critical that we have people on the Board who are able and willing to step > > in and lead or manage various the efforts by LLG to achieve YOUR goals. To > > put it simply, we have not had enough such people on the Board. I can > > strongly commend mukti and gleki among the Board members as being > > particularly active in both leading and doing things. > > > > But we need more. More on the Board who are willing to take action, or to > > lead others in doing so. > > I'm sorry but I have lost confidence in Gleki. > It is not for his lack of knowledge of philosophy, but for some > activities of communication: That would merely suggest that if gleki were to be an official spokesperson for LLG, he run any official statements by the Board of Directors before they are posted, and make sure that any statements that are not reviewed in this way are his own opinions and NOT official. I know that I try to clearly distinguish any official statements from my own opinions when I post (in speaking now I am speaking as a member participating in a discussion at the meeting) > 1. Gleki suggested the creator of Lojban version of the brower Vivaldi > to use an experimental cmavo "la'oi" without warning of > "experimental". > > I don't know where you got this information from. It is at least phrased > incorrectly. > It is not related to me. Simply the localization string doesn't allow > for using {la'o zoi ... zoi}. The localization string is simply > "Search", not "Search %1". > You can join Transifex Vivaldi team and see it yourself. It's just not > possible to insert {zoi} AFTER the name of the search engine. > I'm not going to ask the developers to change that because it's more > likely that they remove Lojban at all rather than adopt our change. I'm not going to speak about the technical issue. Non-Lojban software may not allow standard Lojban. "la'oi" shouldn't need to be stated as experimental. By the official design, it is inherently experimental because of its morphology. All CV'VV words are experimental cmavo. If byfy wants a new official word, they would be wise to assign a word in the normal cmavo space. > 2. Gleki removed the words "culturally neutral" from the top page of > Lojban website. > > Indeed, I periodically get some negative feedback or questions and when > no one seem to answer them I remove corresponding strings. > This has happened to the Wikipedia article where I removed or commented > out everything that was not supported by any sources (on the other hand > I added many more previously absent concepts they *were* supported by > sources). > This sometimes happens to the front page. I'm just trying apply the same > policy as exists for Wikipedia in general. If it is an official Lojban page, then it is not subject to Wikipedia standards, and should not be changed arbitrarily. The "source" of an official page is LLG, and it was published with our authority as site owner. The claim of cultural neutrality, whether one agrees with it or not, has been a claim dating back to the start of JCB's efforts. One can find statements of this in Loglan 1, and it has been in our official introductory brochure since Lojban was started (and presumably can be found in the Lojban introductory book that replaced that brochure - that would be the thing to cite in Wikipedia, it being our official statement claiming that phrase as describing Lojban. > So for this particular issue I suggest using BPFK to solve it. Not a BPFK issue. This is an LLG issue. > I'm > curious myself how is Lojban culturaly neutral when it creates its own > culture and when historically it was a culturally non neutral Eaton's > list representing a subset of Standard Average European Sprachbund. This is not a topic I want to discuss in the meeting. Please bring it up on the regular list (once this meeting is flowing smoothly again, if you want me to participate in the discussion). Briefly, however, Eaton's list was only one of many sources for Loglan and Lojban, and, in any event, the claim of cultural neutrality is not an absolute claim that would be negated by a statement > 3. Gleki advertised some derivations of Lojban as "Lojban", while he > did some other derivations that are unpleasant to him as "non-Lojban". This probably should be a topic for the meeting, either old business or new business (old because it has been discussed before, new because there is no official policy right now). I'll try to remember, but someone should remind us if I forget. > (As for 2, I don't think either that Lojban _is_ culturally neutral, > but at > least we could aim at it as an ideal, and the words are still worth > mentioning on the top > page.) > > So that's not about Lojban but about some trend in its lexicon or > grammar? That might be worth adding provided that a corresponding > article about this trend exists. Otherwise people start to think (not > without any ground) that Lojbanic community is lying. If LLG wants to "lie" or more correctly "make general statements that might be misunderstood", that is a privilege that LLG has the right to choose. In a wiki format like our site structure, one could have an unofficial discussion page on the topic of cultural neutrality that people can express opinions on. But official pages should conform to official "doctrine". (There should probably be a list of pages that are "official" and they should be locked against change by most people, and there should be a statement that all other pages are not official, and represent the opinions of the contributors.) guskant: > However, I am still pessimistic about the effectiveness. > Actually, a Japanese community uses Japanese for discussion of Lojban, > a Chinese community uses Chinese for it, and so on. > The problem is that they are not much willing to make contact with > other communities of Lojban in Lojban. I think that this would be most easily solved only by someone from outside writing in Lojban that they wish to communicate with someone from the Japanese (or Chinese) community, about ______ topic, and could anyone interested please respond to ______ address. This might take multiple attempts to get people to respond. The challenge is to find topics that people are interested in talking about, and that has been a difficulty all along. Lojbanists don't have any particular shared interests other than the language itself, and I'm not sure we need MORE discussion about Lojban in Lojban. (It would seem that exploring ways in which Lojban seems, or does not seem, to be culturally neutral from the perspective of a Japanese or Chinese speaker would be an interesting topic. Several, years ago, I heard from one Chinese native speaker applauding Lojban as MORE neutral than Esperanto for X, Y, and Z reasons. Flaws in that neutrality may also have been discussed - it was a long time ago.) > That's my vision too. And I don't see any possibility anytime soon to > change that except for writing better tools to make people learn the > language. I don't think better tools will make people use the language more. We need people writing things that other people are interested in reading. News topics of international interest discussed inclusively of multiple viewpoints, short translations of poetry or humor. Description of some cultural feature and how it would apply to expressing things in Lojban. (I would for example be interested in whether Japanese Lojbanists have attempted to use ga'i or some other element to translate or express Japanese-like honorifics in Lojban. I don't know much about Japanese other than such honorifics exist, which suggests to me that a translation from Japanese to Lojban might use ga'i or something else. So there are two things needed - an explanation of how Japanese honorifics work, and a discussion of how to express them in Lojban and when it would seem appropriate to do so, and then perhaps a short text or translation in Lojban that actually uses these features). lojbab _______________________________________________ Llg-members mailing list Llg-members@lojban.org http://mail.lojban.org/mailman/listinfo/llg-members