Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Loglan

From: Steven Belknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 18:04:35 -0600

On Sunday, December 1, 2002, at 05:14 PM, Invent Yourself wrote:

> 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.

More likely, they will conclude that we are fractured community of 
warring, clueless Bozos and avoid both lojban and Loglan.

> 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?

If old Loglan people read your posts they will hardly feel welcome.

>>> 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!

I estimate that there are about 500 people with some degree of 
familiarity with Loglan who might be interested in lojban. Since most 
of them have never heard of lojban, they are unlikely to join the 
lojban community. I believe it is prudent to obtain contact information 
for these people and invite them into the lojban community.

> 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.

Maybe you ought to switch to decaf.

-Steven