Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: New Members, Board of Directors, other LogFest results

From: "G. Dyke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:54:32 +0200

[NB : I hate my incapacity to change the sender to "jboste" every time,
sorry Jay for the dbl post]

cu'u la djez.

>
> And there are also currently Spanish gismu, and French gismu in the works.
>
> IMO, it ought to be of the utmost importance for the LLG to try and end
> this English-centrism, and at least get the word lists translated into the
> 5 other major world languages. (If not declare it a "priority" that the
> reference grammar and such be translated, as well.)
>
Although you probably all agree about this translation buisiness, I thought
I'd just mention the following, in case you didn't realise how important
this was (it's rather disorganised, as most my prose usually is, but the
idea is that the problems I mention may start disappearing when stuff gets
translated):

For us to be able to actually do anything with Lojban as far as Sapir-whorf
is concerned (as a matter of curious interest at any rate), we need people
who are not *at all* anglophones to learn it. We also need people who are
not "SAE"-ophones.

At the moment, Lojban is (essentially) American - at any rate, this is, more
importantly, the way it appears to be.

Many Amercains fail/don't believe/don't want to know about the intense
dislike of the US (for various political, social and economic reasons) and
of anglo-centrism (for social, scientific and linguistic reasons) which
occurs in the rest of the world - particularly in non-British Europe. The
type of person who goes into Lojban is also frequently the type who has
radical and outspoken views on things; and is likely to be put off by the
fact that Lojban has been about for (again,what appears to be) 50 years, and
nobody has made it available to people who have no wish to learn English.

As an example of this attitude, one of the first messages I got from Nicolas
Buisson, after I had explained that there was no Lojban material available
to people who spoke no English, explained his view that Lojbanists seemed to
be satisfied with the audience they had so far and that Lojban would
probably stay an American affair. He concluded his mail with

"Good luck to Lojban, I'm certainly not going to learn English just for the
sake of Lojban, you say that some people find that Esperanto doesn't meet
their ideals [I had pointed out to him that we had a few lojbo je spero,
adding that some found esperanto disppointing], at least with Lojban, I will
never have to go to the bother of finding out whether it meets my ideals or
not."

This is one ka'e lojbo which I managed to "save", but there must be hundreds
like him out there.

So anyways (sez I, in truly American declamatory style), translation of
stuff into other languages, paticularly na'e ropno) of Lojban material
should be made a priority. I've looked at the vocabulary, nearly all chinese
words contributed to the gismu, surely they should find Lojban reasonably
easy - or even familiar?

mu'o mi'e greg