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Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
And Rosta wrote:
And I *genuinely* can't understand on what grounds you
think it would be a good thing for the specification ('prescription' in
your words) to remain unchanged and for such a language's speech
community to grow, or on what grounds you think that the possession and
lack of comparative fluency in this pidgin respectively confer and deny
credibility.
Simple. If we don't have a really *substantial* number of people
comparatively fluent, then because this is an avocational language where
99% of usage takes place, there won't be a lot of uncontrolled usage,
nor people learning it primarily from interacting with such usage, for
any form of Lojban to ever arguably become a creole/language.
(And remember please that my experience is of an era where written
language, which would include IRC, isn't all that "real" for linguists,
and it is the fluent uncontrolled spoken language that is necessary.
With Lojbanists so geographically dispersed, even a quasi-fluent speaker
like Nick has negligible chance for spontaneous conversation, and won't
until there are a handful of Lojbanists in the Melbourne area.)
The Klingonists have quasi-attempted to have a kid learn Klingon as they
would a native language. Lojbanists have talked about it, but I don't
think any have tried it.
The fact that Esperantists DO have native speakers, even though they
aren't numerous, and don't dominate the community or serve as the
standard or model for usage, and may not speak Esperanto as their
primary language, has been an argument for Esperanto being a "real"
language. It cuts through a lot of the negativism from academia.
lojbab
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