[lojban-beginners] Re: usefulness

[Isen hand <isenhand@yahoo.co.uk>]

just to add my pennies worth. Lojban is more than just the
people on the list or in any of the official groups. I know a few people around
where I live who have started learning lojban but are not part of any list or
group about lojban. Unfortunately non of us have reached appoint where we can
actually use the language in day to day conversations but we are working on it.
I suspect that there may well be more people around the world learning lojban
than anyone here knows of.




----- Original Message ----
From: Jared Angell <angell.jared@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October, 2007 3:14:07 PM
Subject: [lojban-beginners] usefulness

I am having a problem understanding the usefulness of a language that
no one actually is conversing in verbally.  I seriously think that if
Lojban isn't to be stillborn than steps have to be taken to get people
speaking it and thinking in it.

Merely having a cool, well structured grammar whose lexicon was formed
from a groovy algorithm and which is totally logical on paper doesn't
mean that an actual language exists, IMHO.

I really liked the idea of Lojban but at my present level of
involvement I see no point in carrying on with it if it is never going
to be anything more than a code that an extremely low percentage of
the Internet population uses to play mental games with one another.
Which is, forgive me, exactly what it is at the moment.

I see absolutely no reason why a well thought out English or even
Esperanto sentence cannot convey the same ideas as a Lojban sentence.
It is true that complex philosophical, mathematical, and physics ideas
are more easily expressed in Lojban but that statement is based on the
assumption that a person could actually think in Lojban which it
appears that no one does, or maybe half a dozen currently do to a very
limited extent.

When Ben Yehuda created the modern Hebrew partially constructed
language the way that language came to life was by gathering people
willing to speak it together.

The next step in the Lojban process should not be, with apologies to
the LLG, to let it evolve, but rather, to see to it that people are
speaking it in communities.  And I feel that this is not such a lofty
goal.  I feel that if key members of linguistics departments all over
the world were shown the inherit value of Lojban than classes in it
could commence within a year and people would begin learning and using
this language academically.

This may be happening and I am unaware of it but from what I can tell
Lojban is not growing at a sufficiently fast rate to survive.  Which
is a shame, Lojban has a great deal to offer.  But I have to question
the motivations of anyone on this list if they are just learning a
language to type to perhaps 1000 in on their spare time.

For those of you who have no academic interests but who feel as I do I
would suggest teaching Lojban to your families or opening up a night
course in your local area where you teach Lojban after you yourself
have learned it to a certain degree.  Personally, I feel that the
software that teaches us Lojban is only useful to a limited extent and
I think I'll be putting together a home study course by creating new
software and making study CD's with Lojban selbri on them.  I'm hoping
the combined effect will be such that even someone like myself that
has a hard time with language will be able to pick up this language.
This would greatly improve the learning time for Lojban and therefore
allow those who randomly find the website and are interested like
myself to learn Lojban and them go out and teach it as per my
suggestion.

I'm sending this message on this medium for two reasons: 1. is that I
feel that this is the proper audience seeing as how all the 'fresh
meat' is here; 2. My experience with the leading elements of the
Lojban community is that they have given all that they can give and
they are burnt out, tired, out or time, and grumpy that someone else
doesn't take up the torch already.  If the LLG were doing a better job
than Lojban would be something that was at least showing up on
slashdot and talked about in certain academic circles.  As far as I
can tell the only people outside of the rather small Lojban community
that know of the language are Esperanto speakers - and only a small
number of them.  It is a shame that only the crafters of this rather
amazing tool are the ones who utilize it for the crafters of a tool
are known to only use a tool as it was intended and not for anymore.
It is well known that tools usually can be used for more uses than
they were intended, is it not?

I have heard it argued that the reason that there are so few texts yet
translated into Lojban is that it is so 'other-worldly'.  I think this
is a terribly crafted excuse for a language with such a small and
totally voluntary user-base that it is incapable of getting reading
materials produced or translated.  Without reading material this
language is nothing.  Things are not not getting translated into
Lojban because of the difficulty level.  Things are not getting
translated into Lojban because the only people who are just fluent
enough to translate them do not have the time because they are not
being compensated for it.  If people were in a Lojban community where
Lojban culture could develop and children grew up speaking Lojban (it
would be Utopia probably) then translating things and writing things
in Lojban would be as trivial as it was to translate thing from a
multiplicity of languages into Modern Hebrew when the state of Israel
was founded.

What Lojban really REALLY needs a a millionaire to sponsor it.  Lojban
need visibility.  Lojban needs marketing.  People need to know about
this language...less than 1% of 1% of the Internet populous is aware
of this language from my calculations...how much of the world is that?
 I mean if the slashdot community isn't even aware of Lojban (and
where is there a more perfect place to recruit potential speakers than
slashdot) then who is?  Lojban T-shirts on thinkgeek is also a
possibility to look into...is anyone aware of anywhere on the next
where you can even find pre-printed Lojban memorabilia???

That said, does anyone have an idea for how you would say 'geodesic
dome' in Lojban?

-- 
Jared

"There is no emotion, there is peace;  there is no ignorance, there is
knowledge;  there is no passion, there is serenity;  there is no
death, there is the Universe"

"Work smart when you can and hard if you must"

"When a system is corrupt then it's time for a reformat"

"Open Source: The light side of computing.  It's never too late to
 join"








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