On 9/10/2014 7:02 PM, TR NS wrote:
On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 1:30:07 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:
This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
people
explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high. More
importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of conlangs
whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop fiddling with
the language design. Those that have survived and spread have stopped
being developed, and are simply USED.
Do you truly believe people would leave the language if a change was
made form "on-high" if it were a clear improvement? Just because it is a
change?
Yes, because they would not see it as a clear improvement BECAUSE it is a change (and the reference grammar that they understood as a standard is now declared to be incorrect.
Furthermore, I know this from experience, because the change to Loglan called the "Great Morphological Revision" that remade a significant fraction of gismu, but also made possible the assignment of unique rafsi that enabled lujvo to be uniquely decomposed - one of the most fundamental and successful of the Lojban design features inherited from JCB's version of Loglan. That change caused the language community to die for several years, and planted the seeds of schism that eventually and indirectly resulted in creating Lojban.
xorlo, which most newer people (apparently excepting gleki) consider a major improvement has been a significant demotivator in my using the language. Probably I wouldn't be using the language much anyway, (I have found that using a language even semi-fluently is extremely difficult for me, even if I know the rules and the words well) but I had translations that I really wanted to do, and I remain unconvinced that anyone will be able to read them because I cannot use xorlo properly.
And again, this isn't just me. The advantage and disadvantage of being language-engineer-in-chief, is that everyone for a couple of decades told me their gripes as they arrived and as they gave up/left. People gave up on Loglan because it kept changing. They came back to Lojban because we committed not to keep changing, and to completing a set of language documentation. They then left because we did not complete the documents, many of them saying that they would return when "the language is done".
It is the same mindset that has tens of millions still using Microsoft Windows XP, even though it is 10 years out of date and no longer supported by Microsoft. Upgrading to a new version of Windows (or to some other operating system) would take more of a relearning curve than they would want to bother with, and possibly make some of their old stuff unusable. "Clear improvements" simply aren't what they want.
lojbab
lojbab
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