Re: [lojban] Officialness, spin-off projects, dialects, communication with the outside world

[iesk <pa.fae@gmx.de>]

Selpa'i:
>Do you really want to get into this discussion? It's all politics.

Language politics, too, is part of the Sprachspiel. All is one. ॐ ;)

So, well, no, I don’t really want to get into that. However:
– The MediaWiki has a different logo.
– It describes at least one divergent dialect.
– It describes 'official Lojban' in the past tense and calls it obsolete.

Taken together, LMW kind of looks like a spin-off project. Since I don’t know that much about Lojban politics, I was, believe it or not, somewhat confused if something had changed 'officially' or not. That’s more or less it. My contribution to the community is more or less zero, so I don’t consider my opinion particularly important, yet I thought I’d voice up anyway.

>Yes, let's say that's official. So what? That's not very informative, if
>people have the freedom (and use it) to speak however they want. Needing
>a {ku} is just annoying, why hang on to it? This is a rhetorical question.

It is useful to know that when you put stuff into something called 'the official parser', the {ku} is needed. Which is orthogonal to whether it is annoying or not.

>Now there are lots of unofficial projects on it, but that's the natural
>result of the conservative "leadership". The user base is going to do
>what they think is right, and they will make the changes no matter what.

Mostly agreed. Norm is not usage. Yet what language regulators (those institutions that carry some 'official' stamp around with them) do or do not propagate *does* influence usage, and language change, and speakers’ attitudes. It *is* a relevant information what LLG considers official. (Take the 1990s German spelling reform: no-one is *forced* to use the new spelling, at least not in their private correspondence, yet many [most?] people, although complaining, adapted more or less from the beginning, or at least think they did, even though it is a particularly useless and crappy reform.)

>There is demand for
>change, but the conservative party blocks any ambitions. Nothing must
>change!

I can’t believe it, but apparently I somewhat am conservative. Maybe it’s just a pathological fear of being left behind—I first peeped into CLL some time in the 1990s, and still don’t speak the bangu, and now I see it being reformed before I ever reach that goal! ;) I do, however, use non-official stuff myself!

>Right, except there is no agreed-upon official version (assuming you
>don't only talk about grammar, but also semantics, which in my opinion
>cannot be ignored, but some think Lojban equals Lojban's grammar).

Semantics is part of grammar in my idiolect. I believe that—while Lojban semantics can of course be described in any language—it can only come into being *in* Lojban-language usage. So, what we consider official Lojban does not really tell us a lot about semantics, does it?

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