Re: mutual project

[William Tanksley <wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>]

BTW, I just noticed that the loglanists are hosted from my school, UCSD.
Do you guys meet on campus?

On Mon, Apr 19, 1999 at 06:31:07PM +0100, Colin Fine wrote:
> From: Colin Fine <colin@kindness.demon.co.uk>

> vecu'u le notci po'u <Pine.LNX.3.96.990419001957.2273B-
> 100000@ida.bway.net> la xod <xod@bway.net> cu cusku di'e

> >I speak as someone introduced to Lojban within the last 6 months.

I've kept out of the conversation until now for a similar reason (I've
only been looking at Lojban for a couple of weeks).

> >I am not quite sure why the Loglan/Lojban split is considered a bad thing.
> >It's a fascinating example of languages splitting off into dialects which
> >eventually become mutually unintelligible. I cannot understand a single
> >sentence of Loglan.

> Agreed, that aspect could be interesting. Why it is sad is that there
> are groups of people working on similar projects and having little or no
> communication.

I don't find it too suprising, simply because the project approaches are
so dissimilar.  The Loglanders (if I may) have a non-fixed language which
can be tinkered with and improved; the Lojbanistanis have a static
language which can be studied.  We (as always) have quite a bit to learn
from the results of our studies, but very little to help the studies
themselves.

If there's any suprise to be found, it's that Lojban was started from
something as seemingly unsuited to it as Loglan (no insult intended, let
me explain).  Lojban, as far as I can tell, was intended to be a free
language, like Linux is a free OS.  It's odd that the founders used
Loglan, a non-free (copyrighted with trade secrets) language as a basis.

Oh well.  I like both languages; I like the fundamental research that I
see on the Loglan page, and I like the exploration which I see in the
Lojban group.

> >I cannot imagine any benefits associated with "cooperation" between the
> >two languages. Since there is no hope of the two languages fusing into
> >one, I am afraid such activity would weaken both languages by wasting
> >time. That effort would be better spent creating translators into English
> >or Chinese.

> I can imagine such benefits - in cross-fertilisation, and indeed in
> coordinated difference. If Lojban goes one way and Loglan another in
> some respect, this might be interesting. It might be even more
> interesting were we to say "We'll try doing this in our version and you
> do that instead, and let's see what effects they have".

One problem is that Lojban has (AFAIK) nothing whatsoever to gain from
such an experiment -- its definition is frozen, and will not admit change
for at least five years.

The Loglanders would indeed do well (I suspect) to watch Lojban and
imitate the successes while shunning the mistakes -- but how can we tell
the differences?  Artificial selection doesn't work when we don't have a
selection criterion.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley
"But you shall not escape my iambics."
           -- Gaius Valerius Catullus