Subject: Re: [lojban] META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying)

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 21:46:58 -0400

I see xod responded, but perhaps my answers will help as well.

On Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 01:52:13PM +0200, G. Dyke wrote:
> coi rodo
> 
> [I hope you don't think this post to be of no use whatsoever ; if you do,
> exercise your yoga before flaming - LOL]

Nope - if the list is getting inaccessible to newbies, it's good to be brought
to our senses.

> Having been following the discussions more closely than usual these past few
> days (hey! waiting for college to start gets pretty uneventful during the
> last months, I've got a lot of time), I've come to the conclusion that I'm
> missing a lot of the discussions because I've got no background on this. For
> instance, are these words specific to americans and those who've known them
> a long time or have they come about through lojban : "fiat" (as in "fiat
> decides..."),

"fiat" I would say refers to a bunch of people deciding to suddenly make a
change.

> "glorking",

This comes from a certain sentence written by David Moser: "This gubblick
contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp
can be glorked from context." People referred to this sentence by saying
something was "glorked from context", which later just became "glorked".

(Incidentally, in the "texts" section of lojban.org there's a self-referential
story by David Moser, translated to Lojban by Nick Nicholas. I just recently
read it, and it's great. This is something which seems like it was destined to
be translated into Lojban.)

> "glorkjunkied" (aha! the latter two are related),

I believe that a "glorkjunkie" is the opposite of a "hardliner" - someone who
believes that as long as you can tell what a sentence means, it's good enough.

> elephant.

A revolutionary tool, being programmed by John Cowan, which supposedly will
allow us to argue much more efficiently.

> Why do some people support and reject {gumri} ? (Don't you dare
> tell me to go to the wiki, last time my telephone bill had trouble coming
> out alive %^).

{gumri} is a word which once meant "mushroom", but it was dropped from the
final version of the gismu list. Just now we're getting around to mourning its
loss. Some of us, anyway.

> I'm also puzzled by Nick (who, if I've got it right has spent
> one hell of a lot of time learning lojban) having views such as lojban never
> succeeding, rafsi not being a good idea and ... what else?

Perhaps I should look more closely at what Nick says. I don't especially
remember him saying that, and thought that I agreed with him on most things
(but not gumri) :)

That sounds like the sort of thing And would say, though.

> I'd appreciate anyone who could help me by adding their beliefs and desires
> for lojban (and who could give any other information that might be relevant
> to newcomers - life around lojban-beginners is good but we want to graduate,
> there isn't the same element of risk involved in posting there as there is
> on lojban :-) Are there others who read the lojban-digest (not individual
> mails? surely!) avidely hoping to better their lojban, but not often
> putting their opinions forward because they're bound to lose against the
> sheer bulk of emails coming from opposers...

I've always read individual mails. When I joined the list, there weren't so
many of them, and by the time the volume picked up I was too addicted to care.

I'm not quite sure where my beliefs fall. Perhaps "reluctant hardliner" would
describe it. I don't like to see certain words having unclear meanings, but I
also don't like ugliness (it took me a long time to accept {ce'u}, and
{no'axiro} still pains me). Additionally, I respect the baseline, but that
doesn't mean I _like_ the baseline.

I'm interested in Lojban for a few reasons - constructed languages are just
cool and I find Lojban to be the least flawed one; I believe that using Lojban
helps me think more clearly; I eventually hope to see it used for
human-computer interaction (speech-to-text in Lojban would be a good first
step).

I'm also working on getting good at Lojban for another reason: I'm taking a
course in school called "History and Structure of Language" (which is basically
about linguistics). For a semester project in which the assignment is to
research a topic and then give a 45-minute presentation about it, I plan to
teach the class a bit of Lojban. High-schoolers might be a tough audience, but
at least they're there because they're interested in language. I plan to spend
lots of time on cmene in that presentation.

This implies that I'm another young Lojbanist (mi jbena fi li 1983 pi'e 12 pi'e
9), but I try not to draw too much attention to that fact.

> An example of something that took me ages to understand : xod no longer
> signs his emails so and doesn't have xod in his address ; how's a newcomer
> supposed to work out who is referred to in the sentence "xod said...".
> Another thing... it took me a month to work out that pycyn was lojban for
> PC - who's name I eventually found in the reference grammar. This is NOT
> your fault but it should give you an idea of how complicated life is...

It seems that xod deliberately makes himself difficult to refer to, with the
strange names he gives himself. (At one point I referred to him whimsically as
{la kokofintis.}) "xod" gives us a nice, concise way to refer to him, even if
it confuses the heck out of newbies (sorry).

> Anyway, here's the list of information about me that might be useful, and
> that I'd like to know about you (so far I've worked out that you don't go
> arguing maths with pycyn - if you can help it - but knowing such things in
> advance might be useful)

I don't think the math part was the problem in particular - just the
"arguing with pycyn" part. :P

-- 
la rab.spir
noi sarji zo gumri