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

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 5:28 PM, mohamad na.el (I think)
<muhammad.nael@gmail.com> wrote:
> That may be, but I think that the problem with Lojban is that it wants to
> satisfy everyone. If they focused on a particular use for Lojban while in
> development, and built upon that as they gained experience, maybe into
> another bigger project, maybe it would have been better. You just can't have
> words that tells one meaning each, and expect to have words that equate to
> every thing expressible, at least that's what I think.

Lojban has been slowly acquiring new domains of competence over the
years.  At first basically no one spoke fluently in any style on any
topic.  At that point people wrote dictionary in hand and expected
their reader to read the same way.  As far as I know the first
community to develop conversational fluency in Lojban was on IRC; I'd
say the first topic the language successfully embraced there was the
conversation itself.  Everyone there speaks English as well as Lojban,
so occasional Lojban can be used to decorate an English conversation.
It starts by taking over greetings and partings; people quickly pick
up on saying "coi" and "co'o" to everyone coming and going.  There was
a lot of silliness in the Lojban at first, because we're silly people
but also because we couldn't maintain a conversation on any serious
topic.  But gradually the Lojbanic parts of the conversations grew,
until there were lots of uninterrupted stretches of conversation in
Lojban and it started to explore various territories.

One terrain Lojban has been expanding into slowly for a while is
conversations about Lojban.  I think that's a terrific step.  We've
been figuring out Lojban words and phrases for talking about
grammatical categories and types of words and how to say the sorts of
things you say talking about each other's language use.  At first in
IRC Lojban there developed some language for correcting people and
commenting on their usage, like "djisku" (and/or "skudji").  Now
there's enough words for structures and categories that a lot of the
metalojbanic conversation is moving into Lojban, which I've always
thought should be a constructive step for the language.

Those are clearly baby steps.  I've heard proposals that Lojban should
be used for like, patent descriptions.  Maybe in some future, but
certainly not next.  Lately Lojban has been expanding into like,
children's stories and comics.  If Lojban is used for profound serious
matters someday it'll be difficult to remember how all that rests upon
the strength the language gained playing and frolicking in the fields
of jbotcan.

But Lojban is meant to satisfy everyone.  Eventually.  Or at least
they could satisfy themselves, if they wanted to.  There's a giant
ocean of lujvo.  Even the three rafsi lujvo, never mind the four rafsi
lujvo, is a gigantic space.  Whatever meaning you want Lojban to have,
you can pick somewhere in that space-- the closest place, even if it's
not really that close-- and put your meaning in with everything else.
Eventually someone will bother to make words about all sorts of
things.  That people will forget most of them will only make it more
powerful and useful, if anything.  You can bring out a word no one
knows, but it's not even just randomly invented, you're drawing out a
whole piece of history.

I'd like to make Lojban better at talking about feelings.  There's no
way to do it except to dive in and use Lojban to talk about feelings,
I think.  Language is a magical substance that becomes whatever you
use it for.

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o

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