Re: [lojban] Balningau: The Great Update

That's okay, John, I won't hold it against you. You will probably find my letter in a cardbox box in some storage close of TLI. About the only thing I remember how to say in Loglan75 is "lemi pingu ga blanu ze nigro" (~="lo mi pinji cu blanu joi xekri") Actually, that's not really true. I do remember many predicates (both primitives and complex), and most of the little words. I had used Loglan as the Ancient tongue in my D&D campaigns (theoretically switched since then to lojban, but that's only academic, since I only DMed once since learning lojban).

Were Loglan 2 and 3 ever actually written? Could have used a good tutorial.

Did JCB actually use the language himself? Was he fluent?

--gejyspa

On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 10:50 AM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Gee, sorry about not getting back to you in 1976. I thought we had most of the backlog cleared up fairly early on, but some pieces must have gone missing. I doubt lojbab could be as possessive as JCB, though degrees probably don't matter at this point. However, JCB was willing to scrap quite a bit for what he took to be a major improvement, where as lojbab seems unwilling to change even minor things for any purpose at all. Admittedly, JCB was able to convince himself that the changes were his idea whereas lojbab doesn't ever think about (let alone in) the language and so does not have that out. Unfortunately, this indifference has not loosed his grip as it has done with other language creators, hence the impasse.

On Tuesday, November 11, 2014 2:23 PM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, at the risk of nu morxirda'i,I have finally gotten a chance to read this thread. And while nobody asked, I will add my two cents.

I find myself pretty much in agreement with Wuzzy, quoting lojbab:
> They choose to use Lojban because it is DONE (even if not
> fully documented). And they value our commitment against ad hoc
> prescriptive change.
Oh yeah, this is true for me.
Yeah, it may sound crazy to some, but there are some people (like me)
out there who actually simply want to USE Lojban, not to change it all
the time. xD

I learned Loglan in 1976 from the books that existed then (getting no response to my letters from the Institute back then, I assumed it was moribund), and then when I rediscovered it, post-internet inception in 2004, learning that I was going to have to relearn everything anyway, I learned lojban instead, which appeared to be much more vital. So I did, from the CLL. I learned all the gismu, all their places, and use them. And yes, I don't want to have to relearn them. At my age, it's a heavy memory load. This same kind of discussion goes on all time with one of my other passions, tournament Scrabble. Of necessity, they have to reissue the dictionary every so often. But the old-timers don't want to have to restudy lists that they already spent a long time memorizing, to add new words to them (or much worse, deletions from them). The young bucks who are just starting out don't care, because they are tabulae rasae anyhow Same goes with lojban, backwards compatibility aside. So of course you are right to expect pushback from the oldtimers about the idea.

That being said, I do find it kind of ironic that lojbab seems to be now in the position of JCB, despite his protestations of democratization of the language, it appears he finds it as much his baby as JCB did Loglan, and is loathe to make any changes simply because of that fact. This despite the fact that he self-admittedly doesn't really use the language. I don't think it's fair that he dismisses selpa'i as basically a young whippersnapper who doesn't care about the language. selpa'i IS a major user of the language, and that position alone makes his opinions at least as worthy of being given an audience as those of xorxes. Curmudgeonly derision is not productive. I say all this despite the fact that I don't like many of the ideas that selpa'i has for the language, but I don't deny his right to have them.

zu'unainai, The fact that whatever procedures are in place for change, even if that pace of change seems glacially slow, are looked upon as not worthy by the balningau crowd, instead of actually accomplishing them, speaks volumes about them, though. So, it has the appearance that jsut like the lojbab-JCB dynamic, you want to your changes to be fast-tracked. Well, you can do what he did and form your own language (since he cleared the way for you by getting the courts to agree that "loglan" is not copyrightable :-) ). It's happened before. That's why lojsk, gua\spi, Ceqli, etc.exist. But you want to stay within the bounds of lojban? So, do the work that had already been determined to be the next step. Don't jump at revolution. (If stuff IS done formally, and we end up with a new CLL, (and hopefully a next generation jbofi'e to go along with it), and/or a new gimste, I will reluctantly go along with it, but I won't do anything for something that's not gone through the formal channels.

--gejyspa

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:29 AM, TR NS <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, August 7, 2014 9:36:47 AM UTC-4, la durka wrote:
litru already has that place, you don't have to add it.
Well, that was easy ;-)

Thanks!
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