Re: [lojban] CCL and xorlo

[Daniel Lyons <fusion@storytotell.org>]

Hi jsemeria. I'm also new here.

I went through the same thought process. I wound up deciding to just
learn from the CLL for these reasons:

 - The CLL is still prominently linked to on lojban.org
 - My impression is that getting xorlo wrong amounts to using 'le' instead of 'lo'
 - I have a paper copy of CLL
 - Waiting is boring

As another outsider, I share some of your frustration, if not at the
same magnitude. I only knew about jbovlaste so I wrote
http://www.7gf.org/lojban/ before I found out about
http://vlasisku.lojban.org/ ; I spent a lot of time wondering what
jboski was up to before I discovered http://genrei.lojban.org/ . In
"figurative" language, the website seems to be "nervous" about linking
to new stuff and so conservatively shunts people to outdated
resources. There seem to be a lot of people working on a lot of
things, but Lojban seems to inspire or attract a certain kind of
perfectionism so progress looks slower than it actually is.

I'm not very community-oriented myself, because I'm just not all that
social. So I'm not learning Lojban in order to participate in the
Lojban community--not that I have anything against that approach, it
just isn't mine, and if it happens, great. I'm just saying, I wouldn't
attach too much importance to the community. In fact, a healthy
language should have multiple communities using it--it's only
dangerous with constructed languages because people will be tempted to
change the language. Assuming that doesn't happen, it should be
positive to have separate communities. One wouldn't expect to create a
single happy homogeneous Biblical Hebrew community that encompasses
everyone--people interested in Biblical Hebrew have personal reasons
for it, and when those reasons don't line up it isn't because there's
something wrong with those people or the language. At best you'd wind
up having very stunted conversations. I think the small magnitude of
the change presented by xorlo really shows how strong Lojban is--even
if you had a separate community that refused to accept it, there would
not be a loss of mutual intelligibility, and both would still be using
the same language in every practical sense, and that's considered the
largest change since CLL.

I guess I'm saying, give yourself permission to learn and use Lojban,
because nobody can stop you. :)

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 03:16:47AM -0700, jsemeria92@gmail.com wrote:
> I was just wondering if anyone is working on updating the CCL (or any 
> learning materials for that matter) to correct for xorlo?
> 
> I remember hearing or reading somewhere (for the life of me I can't recall 
> the source) a few days ago that it was being worked on but I've failed to 
> find any information about such a thing. I only ask because I want to try 
> taking a crack at learning lojban again but I'd rather wait until the 
> online CCL thing is updated with xorlo. I find the thought of learning 
> lojban while trying to figure out how it really works with xorlo instead. 
> Leads to me being very confused and frustrated I suppose. So I occasionally 
> click on the lojban website, check to see if the CCL has had xorlo 
> incorporated and it never is so I end it at that. Rinse and repeat. 
> 
> I really could go through the effort of course, but I'm a weirdo who's mind 
> does not work in his own favor, so I frustrate easily, constantly obsessing 
> over learning it right the first time and not worrying that this xorlo 
> thing. I like learning from the CCL, reading over all the details and 
> quirks of the language, its like a fun language puzzle to me. It makes me 
> think a lot, and makes me want to write stuff and explore this language 
> like an odd puzzle. I'm nerdy like that I suppose. So having one resource 
> without having to mentally wonder wtf is different in actual current lojban 
> use since there seems to be no way to learn lojban post-xorlo like I want. 
> So it seems my two options are: learn lojban as it currently resides within 
> the online reference grammar book thing, then after all that update my 
> knowledge to accommodate the xorlo proposal, or have the xorlo proposal 
> page in another tab (as i've done before) while reading the section of the 
> CCL (I forget the acronym for the online version, my apologies) reading 
> that and switching between the two and rewriting the info to incorporate 
> xorlo. But I seem to lose motivation quite quickly unfortunately due to the 
> daunting task, and remembering that I probably would have to go through the 
> rest of the book as well to update stuff. I don't know, I'm crazy I guess.
> 
> Now moving past that rambling nonsense I'll come to my second question, how 
> long ago was this xorlo proposal approved? I don't know about the date but 
> I think its safe to say at least three years, I really don't know however. 
> So why is it in all that time, there seems to have been no attempt (or 
> rather no successful attempts) of changing the learning materials for this 
> xorlo thing? Its a pretty big change in the language, though not too big I 
> suppose. And for a newbie like me at least, seeing this big change and 
> trying to learn with all the materials not using it, is very confusing and 
> for me at least because as previously stated I am crazy, frustrating. 
> Perhaps its a lot of work, in fact I know it is and I am very appreciative 
> to anyone and everyone who has worked on lojban and teaching those curious. 
> And I know there is a lot of work being done right now on aspects of the 
> language, though I don't have much knowledge about what exactly this work 
> is. From what I know its going over cmavo mostly and doing important things 
> like finishing the language but again I'm not quite sure exactly how people 
> are doing that. I'm very glad this is happening and people are doing this, 
> but it seems all the effort is going towards "perfecting" the language 
> which is quite a noble goal, but seems to be taking all the effort away 
> from getting the language to grow. And by that I mean, getting more people 
> to learn lojban and grow the community. The extra interest may lead to 
> extra man power for all of this work I suspect.
> 
> Perhaps I'm wrong about all this, I admit I'm not very knowledgeable about 
> the community at the moment. So I was just wondering what's going on with 
> things these days? I'm trying trying to get back into lojban, but I feel as 
> though at the moment that its not worth getting into if the community is 
> divided and/or isn't quite focused on gaining more members to lojban. I'm 
> not stating that is a fact at all, perhaps its exactly the opposite, I'm 
> simply stating what it currently feels like to me at least. 
> 
> P.S. Thank you for reading and sorry for rambling on too long, I tend to do 
> that when I type late at night lol.
> 

-- 
Daniel Lyons

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