Subject: Re: Lojvan, Logvan, Henry A. Wallace, cults, and gurus

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 01:16:57 -0500

At 12:42 PM 12/15/2000 -0500, Gene Ledbetter wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 17:57:00 -0500 "T. Peter Park" <[email-masked]>
>writes:
>
> >ju'i lobypli! coi lojbab.! coi pendo!
> >Greetings cyberfriends!
> >Many of us are familiar with Lojban ("Logical Language") as the name of
> >a constructed language, and with "Loglan" as the name of a predecessor
> >of Lojban.
>
>I checked Lojban out by going to the Lojban home page. I see that it's in
>an early stage of development and that so far there is only one fluent
>speaker of the language. (That's the guy over in the corner talking to
>himself.)

Having that "lone fluent speaker" sitting beside me, he corrects me and 
says that there is at least one other person as fluent as him (that I did 
not know was fluent).

In any event, lack of fluency does NOT come from the language being 
difficult, but rather because so seldom do Lojbanists get together in the 
flesh (as opposed to online communications) that few have had sufficient 
chance to practice speaking the language to reasonably expect to speak 
fluently.

In point of fact there are several people who are about as skilled in the 
language as that fluent speaker, and who have demonstrated that skill in 
translation and/or email conversation and/or IRC chats. I myself can 
converse in the language fairly easily, but not fluently - but then I have 
never spoken ANY of the three other foreign languages that I have studied 
fluently, so I am a poor specimen to judge the ability to learn the language.

In short, we have claimed a limited number of fluent speakers primarily 
because we have a high standard for demonstrating fluency and not that many 
people get the chance to prove it. There is no doubt that people can 
converse in Lojban fairly easily - we do so every year at our annual gathering.

>One mistake that Esperantists make is the claim that Esperanto is so easy
>that anybody can learn it. I recommend to Lojbanists that they promote
>Lojban as being so incredibly difficult that only the very intelligent
>can learn it. You get no end of people trying to learn Lojban and at
>least pretending fluency in it.

That is precisely what we DON'T do.

lojbab
--
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