Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language)

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 10:34:21PM +0100, Ivo Doko wrote:
> On 5 January 2011 17:52, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>wrote:
> 
> > Saying that
> > it is very far from being complete and functioning is ridiculous,
> > and pretty insulting to a lot of people's hard work.
> 
> As for the title/subject, I never said that lojban is *broken*, pardon me, I
> only said that it isn't finished, 

You did, actually:

  it's a fully defined, complete and functioning language, which
  lojban is very far from being at the moment

"far from functioning" is very different from "incomplete".

> which is not something I made up - I constantly read people both
> newbies and oldies ranting on about how there's so much work yet
> to be done on lojban 

This is why I started by saying that this isn't really about you.

There are a lot of things that can and should be done aronud here,
but very few of them have to do with making the language *complete*.
It's plenty functional as is, it's more about finishing the
codification of what is.  Even things like xorlo were, overall,
extremely minor; it changed very little about how the language is
actually spoken.  The only thing of any real significance was lo's
inner quentifier.

And yet people act like it's hugely full of holes and millions of
things need to be changed, and on and on.  It's just not true.

I'm not saying *you* did anything wrong, because as you said people
say things like this all the time.  It's a generic problem 'round
here.

> To me that seems like lojban is, to put it as simple as possible,
> not finished. 

I think that that's fair; it's just not what I heard you say.

> Esperanto, on the other hand, is. Were you trying to say that
> Esperanto isn't finished either? It may not be as "fully defined"
> as lojban is, but that doesn't really say much. 

That was all I was saying, yes.  I had no intention of asserting
that Esperanto wasn't finished, which is why I divided my comments
into two sections.  You said that Lojban was far from being fully
defined; I was responding to that.  Then later I responded to you
saying that it is "very far" from complete or functioning.  It is
not, in fact, very far from either of those.

"unfinished" yes, but there is a sense in which it will *never* be
finished; all languages change and grow.

"very far from finished", no.

-Robin

-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei".   My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

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