Subject: Re: [lojban] fanvyca'a

From: Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 20:21:56 -0600 (MDT)

On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, Rob Speer wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 04:23:43PM -0600, Jay Kominek wrote:
> I remember last time we started coming up with technical lujvo on the list,
> someone warned against letting Lojban become a "geek language" by making a
> disproportionate number of them.

Anyone putting forward this view should instead put their time where their
mouth is and simply produce an equal number of non-technical words.

Lojban will not be advanced by sitting around not increasing the
vocabulary.

> However, I feel that the things we can most easily accomplish with
> Lojban are on the technical side, so why not have lots of technical
> words as well?

Indeed. I find it very likely that Lojban will first gain popularity in
technical circles, but if the people in those circles come to it and find
that they can't discuss the topics that interest them, they'll be less
interested in continuing to learn.

> In addition, text often has to be included in the messages which cannot be
> changed - filenames, names of programs, etc. I've begun to use < and > as
> delimiters - they are both basically the equivalent of .gy. or any other
> delimiter.
>
> Example: "You must supply a URL" -> "ko sabji la'o <url>"

I'm familiar with GNU gettext, does GNOME use something else? Why can't
you translate things where appropriate? (Like 'URL'?)

- Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
A UNIX is anything which is subtly incompatible
with everything else claiming to be a UNIX.