Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Computing in lojbanistan

From: Logical Language Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 03:48:02 -0400

At 10:57 AM 06/27/2000 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
> > --- In [email-masked], "LYlun.martins." <lalo@h...> wrote:
> > > I'd like to invite experient lojbanists who use Unix, GNU/Linux
> > > or similar systems, and use software internationalized trough
> > > potfiles (such as most GNU/Linux software), to translate some
> > > potfiles to lojban.
> >
> > We need lots of specialized computer jargon to do that. If we were to
> > suddenly start inventing lots of new computer terms, they would, as
> > Lojbab has pointed out, run the risk of being flawed and/or malrarbau.
>
>Chicken and egg. People will find it hard to write a document if they
>themselves have to invent a great number of the important words as they
>are writing.

The problem is that we have a lot of "important words" left to invent that 
are not jargon, and indeed are the meat of the language, the 2nd tier of 
abstractions that build a language lexicon up from 1000 words to the 
20000-50000 that constitute the lexicon of a college educated speaker, 
excluding jargon. Inventing these is a different problem from inventing 
jargon, and is worth spending good time on. Jargon is not.

A major fear I have with ad hoc word-building with one genre (computerese) 
dominating the writing is that words "important" to that topic and 
relatively useless outside that field will have speakers inventing 2 and 3 
term lujvo for them that rely on knowing that the word is being applied to 
the computer field in order to understand the metaphor (i.e. jargon), 
occupying the short-lujvo space with an "assigned meaning" backed with 
actual usage and thus preventing a more important (as in generally useful) 
word from making use of that tanru. This has been the norm in the TLI 
Loglan community, where they have had articles for example coining 50 words 
for cheeses, and 50 words for stereo equipment, etc. that are not only 
mediocre tanru but are chewing up lujvo space without asking both questions 
one must ask of a lujvo: "is this a good tanru to represent the concept" 
and "can I think of any other concepts that this tanru might suggest that 
would be more general or more useful". That second question is very hard 
to ask when we are working on a specialized topic because we have to drop 
the mind set of the topic to even consider it properly.

>Yet, a list of lujvo carries little weight until it has been
>tested and proven by history. So let's start at an arbitrary point, with a
>weak and untested word-list, and allow the forces of peer-review and usage
>to work!

I'm of two minds on this. One mind says that any Lojban usage promotes the 
language, the other is based on the early history of Loglan, when people 
spent a lot of time doing just this, trying to find ways to coin the 
necessary computer jargon because that was what they wanted to talk about, 
and a) wasting too much time on it and b) coming up with quite miserable 
results because of the lack of broader experience with the language.

Based on the latter, in translating technical text in the computer and 
other fields, I would say that new jargon should be added using borrowings 
from English or whatever, the klutzier the better because that klutziness 
means that you did not waste a lot of time trying to be elegant but 
focussed on the structure and logic of the Lojban, which is the hard part 
of going from idiomatic English to Lojban. If elegance strikes you, go for 
it, and feel free to go back and revise a borrowing when the perfect tanru 
comes to you, but don't be afraid to have a text filled with skamrbroda and 
skamrspageti and whatever else you need, even several skamr- words per 
sentence. It may look like a hodgepodge of Lojban and Pig Latin at first, 
but the lexicon will catch up once the texts are being written. With such 
a writing style, even relative beginners in the language can probably learn 
to write in the language quite quickly.

>How do we stick "x-lojban" where a TWO letter code is allowed?

Data compression? zo'o
--
lojbab [email-masked]
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