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Re: [lojban] Vestigal Loglandians (was: Re: Re: Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy)
At 07:08 AM 11/30/02 -0500, xod wrote:
On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> The other side of the coin is that The Loglan Institute, since the death of
> JCB and his first successor Alex Leith a year later, is barely extant as an
> organization. It is not clear that it has a long term future, or that the
> TLI language version will survive in any form.
What are the latest figures on the size and well-being of the Loglan
community these days?
I doubt that anyone has good figures for the size of either community. We
know a minimum size for the Lojban community based on the size of Lojban
List, and we know that most of those on the list have enough interest in
the language to put up with the occasional flood of messages.
The Loglanists List rarely has any traffic, and when it does, it is a half
dozen messages at most and then silence. Several Lojbanists are
subscribed, so a raw membership count of the list would be misleading.
The only real sign of vitality other than McIvor's work in the last couple
of years, was the efforts of a couple of Russians who were spreading the
faith in their country and language, and the English speaking world has no
window into how much is going on.
It is likely that JCB sold about the same number of his 1989 book as we've
sold of the refgrammar, but he did so over many more years. We know that
he has enough names that he has been able to use bulk mail at times, but we
don't know how many of those names are really still interested.
They may have more money than us, because they had numbers of larger
donations at times.
The TLI community was apparently significantly older on average, when we
attempted to compare the two.
My guess is for various activity levels, at the number of 300 Loglanists
would compare with the number 1500 for Lojbanists. The number of 50
Loglanists would compare with the number 300 for Lojbanists. But the
number of 5 Loglanists would compare with the number 100 Lojbanists. In
short, they have a dearth of seriously active people who are competent in
the language.
The question is whether Lojban can gain these people if TLI and its version
disappear. Historically, the richest recruiting field for artificial
language supporters has been among the supporters of other artificial
languages. This has led to deep and antagonistic rivalries that are
unhealthy to the artificial language community. I've tried to steer Lojban
clear of this, while even so taking advantage of every opportunity to
attract the interest of conlangers that support other languages. The TLI
people would be among the best to recruit, since the TLI language really is
quite similar to Lojban.
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org