Subject: [lojban] Re: Loglan

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 18:14:13 -0500 (EST)

On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Steven Belknap wrote:

> 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.

For heaven's sake! If someone is new to this whole mess, and after reading
that hoary article they search and discover that there are two existing
dialects now forty years on, and that one is alive and the other is dying,
the furthest thing from their minds will be looking for a cmavo to toggle
between them!! They will look for the best dialect, and learn it! If they
mistakenly select Loglan, so be it.

Adhering to the baseline and not horsetrading words for political manuvers
is what will assure people that their language will not mutate, and that
it is not for sale!

> 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.

We are hardly the reason that Loglan is dead. Or are you suggesting we
are? Then why on earth should we worry about the problems of a different
language? Do you think there isn't enough Lojban work to go around?
Perhaps we should ponder ways to integrate Ceqli and Guaspi into the
baseline too, after all, one never knows how many people stumble upon
those websites in random Google searches and then immediately demand that
every conlang they discover hence offer some interface hack for them. Is
your prime interest in Lojban as a multilinguistic haven for conlang
refugees of every stripe?

If old Loglan people want to learn Lojban, no one will turn them away! I
haven't seen a one in all the four years I've been around, though; does
that clue tell you anything? But if they arrive asking for political
concessions and baseline alterations in exchange for their numbers, they
can go back where they came from. Numbers like that we don't need. And do
you think old JCB's response would have been any more accommodating?

> > 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?

Because they are not Lojbanists! And they haven't expressed any interest
in joining the Lojban community, have they? Then that's why they don't
belong on the BF. Here we are, arguing about the inclusion of people who
haven't evinced an interest in participation in the institution, or even
the broader community surrounding it!

So this discussion is logically null. You want to patch over the schism,
but you claim to realize that there is in fact no way to merge the two
languages, making the idea of schism resolution is meaningless. You argue
vociferously in the interest of an invisible, silent population --
Loglanists who now have a new interest in Lojban. You have argued for but
then de-emphasized that toggle cmavo. You have complained about your lost
Loglan efforts, but then claimed to have forgotten most of your Loglan
anyway. And you want to convince newbies of the changelessness of Lojban
by offering to change it for them.

-- 
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.