On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 1:39:34 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:
On 9/15/2014 2:22 PM, TR NS wrote:
> I don't see how a fork can be avoided. I think it's become very clear
> that Lojban, pretty much as it is presently documented, is how the
> language is going to stay. The persons in charge give some service to
> change by "usage" and potential consideration of proposals after full
> documentation of the current language is complete. But how many decades
> are we to wait for that to happen?
I think we are closer than you imagine. Robin is working on the next
edition of CLL this week, and I am reasonably sure it will be out when
we need it next year.
The consideration of proposals could take a long time, or relatively
little. If the proposers document their proposed changes in the form of
change pages to CLL, it makes it fairly easy to consider those changes
and incorporate them relatively quickly (as well as to understand how
minor or major a given proposal is).
I have no doubt little will change. And I have it one good authority. I have read though a large portion of the mailing list archives and your position is clear "absolute commitment to the baseline".
> And can it actually ever be complete?
> And doesn't the whole notion of "completion" work against the notion of
> change?
If the language is essentially complete and well-documented, I hope and
expect that the pressure for change will fall off. Right now we have
15-odd years of accumulated but undocumented change proposals. After
they are decided, then one would hope that new proposals would come at a
slower rate.
That apparently has been the plan all along.
"That is (and always has been) the intent as approved by the Board of the
present, and I will support such myself in the future, but the decision
will be up to the voting members at that time, as to what LLG will or won't
do. I have little doubt that once we have a solid Lojban-speaking
community, there will be no more need for a formal freeze/baseline than
Esperanto has, and the language prescription will have approximately the
same force that the Fundamento has on Esperanto - keeps in mind the core of
the language as it originated, but actual usage often deviates in minor
ways from Zamenhof's designs. The community itself will be the real
normative force, and not the prescription." (http://mail.lojban.org/lists/lojban-list/msg02689.html)
If they don't, then any project that you come up with is
just as doomed as Lojban to the same fate.
I think you have it all wrong. Change is inevitable and I think you just squandered ten years that could have been spent directing that change and perfecting the language. Instead you spent the time doing everything you could to keep change at bay. And it is woefully wishful thinking, to believe that CLL 2.0, "to be published in a couple of years at most", will bring a watershed of speakers (thanks to all your efforts at stability) and thus this new large body of users will subsequently keep the language stable by natural inertia.
My belief is the opposite. If you want to attract people to this language you have to make it so damn good that people can't help themselves. They got to look at it and immediately go "Damn! I'd be a fool not to learn this." Right now you're pushing roast beef. But it's going to take cotton candy and nutritious cotton candy at that! And that's going to take a lot more work and an acceptance of change. What's the old saying... "In writing, you must kill your darlings."
> Besides, starting a new project also allows us to take a step back and
> reconsider things that would simply not be possible otherwise.
You'd be surprised as to the sort of things that were "reconsidered" in
prior iterations. Look at guaspi and Voksigid for prior efforts to
reconsider Lojban.
I have looked at those. Any tonal language (IMHO) is doomed from the get go. Voksigid had some good ideas, but never really got off the ground. And I have looked an many many more.