Subject: Re: [lojban] Loglan

From: Steven Belknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 12:06:13 -0600

On Saturday, November 30, 2002, at 10:10 PM, Nick Nicholas wrote:

> Steven, I don't get what you want the baseline statement to day.
>
> That Loglan is ancestral to Lojban? Sure, but that's history, it has
> nothing to do with the baseline.

Yes it does. If things go well, the lojban baseline will also be the 
Loglan baseline.

> That Lojban is Loglan? I've never accepted that either, but that is
> current LLFG policy. I considered raising a motion against it, but
> decided it honestly wasn't worth the effort.

Possibility 1: lojban is Loglan. If so, then the baseline is the 
baseline for both languages.
Possibility 2: lojban is not Loglan. If so, then the baseline could 
serve to attract Loglanders to lojban if they are dealt with in a 
respectful manner. You are underestimating the importance of emotion in 
human decision-making.

> That strings of Loglan be acceptable in Lojban? Absolutely not, Lojban
> is its own language,

Agreed.

> That there shall be a Lojban to Loglan toggle cmavo? The BPFK will
> consider such a motion, and you already know there is at least one vote
> against.

The toggle cmavo will seem like a good idea to all those who read the 
1960s Scientific American article. ("Oh, I see, the community had a 
squabble and is now united. The language was flawed, but has been 
revised and is now believed to be stable. Good...") I realize it 
doesn't make much sense to waste a cmavo on a toggle from the pragmatic 
position that lojban is flourishing and Loglan is dying. But sometimes, 
perception is reality. Most artificial languages die due to schisms of 
one sort or another. It would be prudent to resolve this schism, as 
this will reassure artificial language enthusiasts that lojban is not 
going to mutate. An alternative to the toggle cmavo would be some means 
of formally describing the differences between the two languages and 
putting a mapping of the predicates to each other on the web site. I'm 
not suggesting this should be a high priority at the moment. Also, most 
of this work should be done by former Loglanders, I would think. Simply 
committing to do this at some point in the future and having the 
approval of the Loglanders to do so would be reassuring to newbies who 
fear the worst: memorizing a list of words only to have their hard work 
discarded for some stupid political reason. I was fairly pissed off 
about this when it happened to me.

> That any work be done to merge Lojban and Loglan into the same
> language, or even into similar languages? I have no interest in that,
> and I doubt many Lojbanists dating from after the split (the clear
> majority) do either.

I am not interested in merging the languages. I've forgotten most of my 
Loglan anyway.

> That we recognise Loglan is a sibling language, and that Loglanists may
> have insights of value to Lojban? Doesn't do any harm, but I don't see
> the big deal. McIvor is welcome to sit in on the BPFK, I suppose. But
> he sits on it as a Lojbanist, not a Loglanist: I'm not doing a thing to
> advance language merger, only to advance the interests of Lojban.

McIvor is not on the BPFK, is he? Why not invite him? What about Alex 
Leith? What about tracking down those Russians? I understand that 
lojbab has some native Russian speakers in his house. :-)

> Personally, I think the best respect to Loglan is done by leaving them
> alone, to their own language. We're not at war, but I really don't see
> the point in actively pinching people. A little bilingualism never hurt
> anybody.

Au contraire. I found abandoning my Loglan vocabulary painful.

> So Steven, please clarify what you'd want.

More wisdom than has been shown so far, nothing more.

> (And btw, rejoice! We finally have an Academy [of sorts] :-) )

Umm, well, I have no objection to the Academy as it was created. I 
posted extensively about this topic to the listserv about this in the 
past.

And by the way, thanks for your work to more lojban forward. I do 
appreciate that.

-Steven