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Message-ID: <e6663d200704110745w6cbbe039k91e348947f8ff969@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:45:46 -0400
From: "Matt Arnold" <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Now what?
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Andrew,

There are projects underway to create a primer, sample dialogues, and
audio lessons. I will certainly ask for official approval of them when
they come together, but volunteer organizations are slow. Constructed
languages are different from naturally-occuring languages. There will
always be a frontier for Lojban within the lifetimes of you and me. It
is unrealistic to ask that to change within the amount of time it
would take you to learn it. It is a matter of accepting constructed
languages for what they are.

Ask yourself how much an unsettled area of the language will affect
your ability to communicate in it. We do have plans to formally settle
discrepancies and map remaining frontiers of uncertainty; but
experience has shown that they do not signifigantly impair us, to say
nothing of spoiling the project.

The plain fact is that the discrepancies in the training materials,
while we certainly need to correct them urgently, are discrepancies in
formality only. The xorlo proposal has won in all practical respects,
de-facto, and awaits only the slow process of asking for a formal
vote. In practice, Lojbanists have gone over to it wholesale. You
should use it. The Dot Side is rapidly getting there as well.

>   Xorxes and rlpowell are the experts who most frequent this list, but
> as you have seen, even they disagree with one another....

All experts on Lojban will disagree with each other, and always will,
just as experts on English sometimes disagree with each other on the
minutiae of perfect propriety.

I also highly respect the proficiency of Adam Cooper (komfo,amonan),
Pierre Abbat, and John Cowan (author of CLL) to name just a few off
the top of my head. Apologies to those worthies who I am no doubt
leaving off the list. There are several highly fluent experts who are
no longer active at all, such as Nick Nicholas. Lojbab and Nora (two
of the founders) participate occasionally but rarely.

-Eppcott