History: the Glasgow Conversation

The Lojban conversation held between Nick Nicholas and Goran Topic in Glasgow in 1995. Famous for its as-remembered recordbreaking fluency. This
conversation, Nick taperecorded and pledged to transcribe, without ever getting round to doing so (-- to the benefit of the myth?)! [mi'e And]

He doesn't have to transcribe it. Digitize it and let's see if we can understand it!

• I think I do have to transcribe it for those too lazy to try , but by all means, you don't have to read along. (For linguistic analysis, I also want to do a linguistically detailed transcription: false starts, talking over each other, the works.) What I'm really worried about is, whether I'll be able to tell Colin Fine and Iain Alexander apart. Goran and Ivan will not be a problem...

I (mi'e nitcion) pledge to do so when I return to Australia (where my tapes are) in November 2001. Hopefully after six years (untouched!) the tapes are still in good condition... After I do so, I will solicit opinions on how best to digitise it and put it on line; my alma mater does this kind of stuff with Aboriginal linguistics, so I don't think facilities will be a problem. (Not to jump the gun, but Ogg Vorbis is currently the best mechanism for compressing audio, assuming you don't want to violate patents or spend money. --jay) 'Is it ready yet? It's the year 2002!'

• I've put a late, inebriated snippet up, with transcript: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/15099 . I will continue to do so, but very slowly...

• And, you've heard the tape; do you remember anything more about the conversation than I do?
  • Not really. It was six years ago. You were both very impressive. As I recall, you ummed and aahed more and seemed to be relying on intellectual bruteforce more. I remember other stuff about your spoken Lojban, but I think that was based on when you were speaking to me.
• And's recollections at the time may be seen at http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9509/msg00193.html

A similar event in Esperanto history was not when the first Esperantist who learned it from a book spoke to Zamenhof (this was Grabowski, but Zamenhof and Grabowski were both Polish), but when the first conversation was held between people with no common language. This was a Russian Esperantist visiting France in the 1890's; unfortunately I don't recall details. Lojban, lamentably, is very far from reaching that goal... (But see Non-English Lojban Materials.) But since the Glasgow Conversationalists had a common language, wasn't it more comparable to Grabowski?