From lojbab@lojban.org Mon Sep 17 23:37:29 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 18 Sep 2001 06:37:29 -0000 Received: (qmail 11749 invoked from network); 18 Sep 2001 02:09:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 18 Sep 2001 02:09:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-2.cais.net) (205.252.14.72) by mta3 with SMTP; 18 Sep 2001 02:09:42 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (dynamic106.cl7.cais.net [205.177.20.106]) by stmpy-2.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f8I29TK33359 for ; Mon, 17 Sep 2001 22:09:29 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010917213552.00dc2790@pop.cais.com> X-Sender: vir1036@pop.cais.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 22:06:53 -0400 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying) In-Reply-To: References: <20010916214658.A6546@twcny.rr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 06:46 AM 9/17/01 -0400, Craig wrote: > >>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. > >Somewhere on the wiki, someone pointed out that respect for the baseline is >like respect for the law - one respects it without necessarily agreeeing >with it. lojbab himself does not entirely agree with the baseline that he champions. I merely remember the reactions of people like you when faced with "yet another change to the language", which was unending in the JCB era. No one EVER learned TLI Loglan to an level much more sophisticated than the level you beginners have already reached. > >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. > >So I'm not the only one around here. As inspiration to you who are young, I should point out that Nick was your age when I got him interested in Lojban, and he had said that in many ways it determined his ensuing life. He is you, 10 years later. I also think that talking about Lojban to high schoolers is not impossible - after all, you guys understand much of what you read about the language. That you don't follow the grad-research level arguments is not to say that the language can't be put at a level comprehensible to the level of education of the typical high schooler. I'd like to do more of this, and indeed one long term goal I would like to see is that "History and Structure of Language" or a course of similar name, would become a mainstay of high school or even younger grades, and that it would use Lojban as a "simpler model" of a language along with examples from a variety of natural languages to teach people what language is all about. I think that learning to think about language is important to being a good communicator in English, as well as in learning foreign languages when you can actually make use of them. It is more valuable than studying a foreign language that you can't actually use everyday and will likely forget once you finish the class (the approach that seems to dominate our American schools today leading to people who know a few words in one other language but who cannot really speak or learn any foreign language when they need it as an adult. If I had had such a course in high school, my college and later life might have been far different. As it was, I was almost 30 before I became active in Loglan, and past that age before I realized how little I knew about linguistics and languages. This affected not only my Lojban work, but my efforts to learn Russian in 1992, when I adopted two young kids from Russia, and found that my 3 years of Spanish and 1 year of German were utterly useless in that effort. (I eventually achieved near-fluency in 6-year-old quasi-Russian even though I still cannot converse with an adult without a dictionary). I'm actually wondering if we need a new gismu (WARNING: SARCASM AHEAD): >"besto" - x1 is an asbestos suit (metaphorically) worn by x2 over e-mail x3, >disagreed with by x4 for obvious reason x5 Rather, you need an attitudinal indicator, which is probably .ionai, .ianai, .ienai .i'anai, or .i'enai in combination with each other and/or zo'o or zo'onai, dainai, or ju'onai,and maybe even "le'o" There is a lot wrapped up in the word "sarcasm" and in the multiple uses to which we put that mannerism in English. Lojban, with a much greater variety of expressions of attitude is potentially much more communicative than English could ever be in this realm. If there is one area I would like to see beginners experiment more with, it is the application of attitudinals of UI to their Lojban usage, because there more than in the logical aspects is where I think Lojban is most likely to show Sapir-Whorf effects because it so expands what can be clearly expressed in language from what people are familiar with in natlangs. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org