Re: [lojban] How it should have been. And how it could be.

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Muhammad Nael <muhammad.nael@gmail.com> wrote:
> Alright,

Alright!  Hey, wait, you live in Egypt?  Um, how are things going over there?!

> For all the gurus and regular Lojbanists out there, imagine you're back
> where it all started, but with your current experience, how would you like
> Lojban to be?

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but I've always thought
the biggest mistake made in the early history of Lojban was making too
much at once.  The whole gismu list and cmavo for every imaginable
possibility were all invented and put in lists and then next everyone
sat down to try to see if they could say anything with them.  We're
still catching up with that to this day.  It's difficult to develop
many lujvo because everyone's always studying our mountain of gismu.

I think it would make sense to start a new language by releasing only
a tiny amount of words at first, and then adding more very gradually
on some sort of schedule.  Each new batch of words would be explored,
defined, refined, clarified, and digested before any more would be
added.  The life of a word is a body of imagery, pedagogy, references,
puns & rhymes, repeated explanations of subtleties of meaning, deep
relationships the word has with the whole language, not just a dry
association between a symbol and a sketch of a meaning.

> Or, imagine that you're using the current Lojban as a template
> for creating the perfect logical language (as close to that), how would
> you want it look like say, in year 2090? or a bit sooner if that's too far.

The main way I expect Lojban to change in the coming years is to
develop much more vocabulary.  Particularly filling out the lujvo
space, and also probably more fu'ivla and I hope some interesting
zi'evla.  Lojban feels like a language that wants to have a lot lot
lot of vocabulary.  We insist that every word has just one meaning.
There's this sense that what you do is simply choose the word that
means exactly what you're actually saying.  But so far we mostly have
these bland fuzzy gismu.  I think Lojban will feel more like the
precise language we imagine it to be, with words directly capturing
all sorts of subtle flavors.  People will always be saying, "You know
what I think is the perfect word to describe that?" and then pulling
out some rich obscure precise descriptive term.

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.