Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Re: Well I guess you do learn something new every day...

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 22:46:52 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:

> > I don't want my lack of dexterity at Lojban to reflect upon Lojban itself.
> > The fact remains that we don't know what fluent Lojban will sound like,
> > and thus we don't know how complete the language is: how different will
> > that fluent usage differ from the examples in the Book?
>
> I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on your usage; it would be
> pretty brassy of me, since I had the prestidigitation but not the
> persistence to keep speaking Lojban. :-) The point is, I think, that we
> will get the Two Lojbans, like we've already discussed: formal and
> colloquial. Colloquial Lojban, because humans are a tolerant bunch,
> especially in spoken communication, will allow all sorts of things, and
> will not test that much of the logicist content of Lojban --- people just
> won't attempt it.

I have been hinting around this point for the past few days. Can perhaps
Lojban can make rigorous logical EASILY speakable? It's already speakable
in English! But it's not easy and English doesn't lend itself to it. Does
Lojban? People sprinkle in the occasional da and zo'u, but as a matter of
course we reserve formal logical sentences for exactly the same cases we
would in English. Prenexed sentences are not used in Lojban any more than
they would be used in English by a group of pedantics. What does this
imply?

Formal Lojban is still a worthwhile thing though, I
> think most people agree --- otherwise, they wouldn't have signed up for
> Lojban, formal or colloquial, in the first place. But I now do not believe
> that all the gaps perceived in Formal Lojban can or should be filled by
> usage in Colloquial Lojban. (If there's a problem with termsets, I doubt
> spoken Lojban will ever resolve it, because I doubt spoken Lojban will
> even bother with them all that much.)

This may be the case, but we need fluent people to settle even the formal
issues. People can order coffee, or they can engage in deep theoretical
dialogue on abstract issues. In learning, folks start with the former and
move to the latter. Therefore it is critical to build a population of
fluent people that can give Lojban the thousands of person-hours of
dialogue and usage that are required to really settle these issues. The
fact there may become two dialects doesn't change the fact that people
interested in the formal must learn and learn well the colloquial. And
for the most part, they haven't been.

-----
"I have never been active in politics or in any act against occupation,
but the way the soldiers killed Mizyed has filled me with hatred and
anger. Now I'm ready to carry out a suicide attack inside Israel,"
one of the witnesses said.