Re: [lojban] Re: You're Doing it Wrong

[kfa@gmx.net]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2010 11:38:17 -0700 (PDT)
Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> Also... I didn't know there were people that wanted specifically to
> learn from a book. I guess that explains Esperanto (apparently their
> entire community is made up of people that learn that way exclusively
> and they have no grass-roots teaching programmes like we do).
> 
I have to latch on this for a minute, because I come from Esperantoland. It's not that the entire community learns it the same way. It's just that it's over 120 years old now and that goes some way towards establishment. I am rather a self-paced book/online learner myself, but I got my toes wet by joining a course in Second Life. Then there's lernu.net and edukado.net. And there are brick-and-mortar courses, in some countries more than in others (in Hungary it's offered in almost every university, in Germany in some). So, there are offers to suit everyone, the lone geek and the take-my-hand type and anyone in between.

Secondly, the comparison of Lojban with Esperanto regarding their history of promotion doesn't work too well, because their environments were/are so different. Esperanto was born from the pains of a man living in a multicultural city full of harsh hostility, not as an academic experiment. Basically, E-o was created in and for Europe, a Babylon of 40+ countries speaking 50+ languages. It survived deadly blows in the upheavals of the 20th century, because it works against nationalism and Zamenhof was a jew (mercifully he passed on before the time that fact became so dangerous). Although it still hasn't reached mainstream after all, it's actually permanently on the brink of doing so. I have a brochure from 1926 promoting its use for commercial purposes. Today there is even a political party working towards getting it officially accepted by the EU at last. Long way still to reaching that goal, but digging and worming.

Lojban, created in modern USA, doesn't really fill such a dire need. That doesn't make it less valuable, but one must admit that it's very much a thing for academics and headgame enthusiasts. Or can you sell it to a blue-collar worker as a cure for his woes with getting English spelling right? Proving the original mission statement of Lojban, resp. Loglan, suggests educating some children completely immersed in it, and then studying how they interact. Let's say, time is simply not there yet...

Amike / mi'e la feliks.

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