[lojban] lojbanistan

["Jared Angell" <angell.jared@gmail.com>]

Everyone,

I have been presenting arguments over the last week or
so first to get an audience and then to present what I feel are real
problems with Lojban's growth.  While the language is apparently
growing I still feel that the level of serious speakers is well under a
necessary critical mass.

I do not feel that this problem is either trivial nor insurmountable.

What
I propose is that certain members of the community should undertake the
task of taking steps towards actually forming a community of Lojban
speakers where children will be brought up speaking Lojban at some
point in the unspecified future.  What I speak of it planning and
marketing thinkers.  They need not even be speakers of the language
(I'm pretty sure that Theodore Herzl didn't speak Modern Hebrew as a
case in point.)

All I am proposing is merely that the topic of forming
Lojbanistan needs to be opened and that it needs to be a goal.  I am
not implying that it need necessarily be an effort or a goal on a time
frame anytime soon.  Merely that it is something that should be
discussed and taken seriously if anyone is serious about getting this
language spoken.

There are historical precedents that I am aware of that lead
me to believe that this is not an unreasonable future goal (among them
the state of Israel is the most similar but I can think of several more off the top of my head).  That does not mean that this
goal would be easy but it need not be worked on for 20 years.

Merely leaving Lojban to the Internet would be to perhaps
allow it survive as a sort of 'geek code' but I highly doubt that
without children growing up with Lojban as one of their mother tongs
that it will ever be more than that.  We have discussed other
possibilities of getting people to speak Lojban and they have all been
quickly shot down...this is the best alternative in my view.

I do not understand why who I am has anything to do with the
value of my arguments.  I am a person who strongly believes that
language shapes thought.  I think that is all that is relevant about me
at present.

Djared (Farlus)