Lojban In General

Quoting Adam Shepley <akmshepley@gmail.com>:

...

> I have never tried to contact anyone regarding lojban because the extant
> community struck me as basically inaccessible. I am not a language snob. I
> opine that the majority of the oldest and most prolific amongst you are in
> fact that. Linguistics *otaku* who are content to tinker and bicker about
> minutiae while a genuinely valuable language moulders in obscurity.
>
> In the ckafybarja archive materials (which I have struggled through
> for years) it is somewhat discussed that lojban requires a community:
> I suggest that a de facto community has in fact grown around the
> language already; a community which is unwittingly xenophobic.

...

> The majority of posts seem to be an ongoing dialogue between a core group
> of around 8 to 12 people. What, from my vantage point, could be described
> as a clique.

The first time I studied Lojban, more than a decade ago, I was too shy
to say anything, being aware of the critical atmosphere in
Lojbanistan. The second time I studied Lojban I talked a bit, but I
was quickly scared off, not just by the negativity addressed at me,
but by the general air of confusion & contention hanging over so many
features of the language, which made me feel that it was unspeakable.

I left Lojban then for a long time, but it haunted me. Grammatical
features would float through my mind while I was showering. Words and
phrases that I hadn't actually studied or used for years or ever were
still hanging suspended in my mind, these unique shapes and structures
that belong nowhere but Lojban. In the end I discovered that I love
Lojban, and that my love of the language was strong enough to bring me
back to try to rescue it.

Now that I am more fluent in Lojban, I understand more clearly why it
presents itself so terribly to newcomers. I don't think the negative
atmosphere is necessary or inevitable, but I've gotten a sense for how
it develops. Consider that Lojban is perhaps the first truly
artificial language to be spoken by a community; Esperanto of course
cheated by resting most of its grammar and semantics on a European
foundation, but (on the level of grammar, at least) Lojban has truly
been built ground up from first principles, even with a bit of rigor.
For one thing, Lojban is a language so fantastically simple that it is
possible to hold its full deep structure in your mind; that's a
beautiful thing, but it also leads people to demand unreasonable sorts
of correctness from newbies, and to teach them in incomprehensible
unimmersive ways.

The main way I believe that Lojban's uniqueness makes it inhospitable,
though, is that it is still very unfinished. A few decades is a short
time in the life of a language, after all (though I do believe that
great progress has been made, even if it's not so apparent close up).
Newbies constantly innocently ask questions that raise unresolved
issues, even completely unexplored questions. This has historically
been a language-invention society, not a language-education society,
and naturally when interesting questions are raised people voice a
cacophony of opinions, but naturally it's offputting to a newbie if
what seems like a perfectly simple question (and what in a finished
language would be perfectly a simple question) cannot get a simple
answer. That's inescapable, though; many questions really cannot yet
be answered well or answered at all; Lojban's not done.

None of this excuses us as a community from overcoming such obstacles.
To me an obvious first step is to draw a bright line between
inward-facing language design (tinkering, experimentation,
exploration), and outward-facing simplification and education. That's
right, we should lower ourselves to the lie of simplification; don't
respond to a simple question with a list of exceptions. I believe
also that we ought to establish a taboo against unsolicited
corrections: if someone says "mi cilre la lojban." (I learn Lojban,
incorrectly phrased), we should say "mi gleki lo nu do cilre fi la
lojban." (I'm happy you're learning about Lojban), positive
reenforcement and providing a good model, not "Lojban can't be in the
second place of cilre! The second place of cilre is a fact that's
learned!", which is true but unhelpfully critical.

We should also work on creating explicit structures to help ease new
people into the language. One which seems like a nobrainer to me is
to indicate to newbies which words (for instance, which of the gismu)
to learn first, and then write & speak to newbies with a heavy
emphasis on those words. I've been working on creating that sort of
structure to help newbies into the language, and I've found it a
surprising amount of work. Still, it's a shame that such things
haven't been anyone's priority for so many years. It's only very
recently that we've even had rudimentary things like simple
illustrated books or vocabulary lists with pictures.

So I think it's important to recognize and respect the tremendous
amount of effort that's been put into Lojban over the years, while
also attending to some perspectives which have been very neglected. I
do believe that Lojban is changing, and is on the right course. I
also think it is still a long hard road ahead-- certainly a very long
road before Lojban is anywhere near as complete as a full natural
language. My love of Lojban gives me the strength to keep tugging it
along that long road, and to toss off the discouragements and
criticisms that arise from its complicated past.

...

> The much commoner (if less "superior") paradigm for community access on the
> internet is the web based forum.

There is, BTW, a perfectly active Lojban web forum:

http://community.livejournal.com/lojban/

There's been a trickle of activity there forever, and I don't know why
it's not taken seriously by the community. I'm an active Livejournal
user myself anyway, so I'm not really aware how hard it is to get an
account or whatever, is that the problem? Anyway I always follow that
group and I encourage anyone to stop by.

I don't expect these mailing lists to suddenly radically alter in
either their structure or their vibe. And why should they? They've
got a long-standing tradition, and they're not using up the whole
internet. It's about time that Lojbanistan was larger than a couple
of mailing lists, IMHO. If people would recognize the effort that's
been put into establishing the Lojban Livejournal community, and
consider it a real part of Lojbanistan, that would be a good start.

...

> The dilemma, in my eyes, is that this was 20 years ago and today
> *still *relatively few people have learned to speak lojban. Why is
> that, I
> wonders? I postulate that since language acquisition is a nontrivial
> task which inherently requires human interaction, the (my?) perceived
> lack of accessible community dissuades potential learners from
> coming in.

Community is essential for more than just transmitting a language; it
is only in a community of speakers that a language exists. Lojban
existed at first as a specification for a language, not a living
language. There are innumerable ways in which communities could speak
Lojban which would match the specification, while still being mutually
incomprehensible!

There is a living Lojban today. It is still a baby language-- it
struggles and becomes as artificial & strained as it used to be if you
try to force it to say complicated sophisticated things-- but it's
used on IRC (the Freenode network, channel #lojban) every day
comfortably at a basic level of conversation. Organic explorations of
the language have begun to take place from inside. It's beautiful to
me to see the simplest things in Lojban, to see people play with the
shapes that expressions can take.

There's still a few missing links between newbies and that living
language which is just starting to emerge. I see newbies all the time
on IRC being told not to take any of the learning materials seriously
because they're all out of date! That must be pretty discouraging.
But I believe we are getting there; I believe that those last few
links can be forged, and Lojban can get the life it deserves.

...

> I hope to check back in two years, or five years, and see the millionth
> lojban speaker fluently joining the new, open lojban community. I pray that
> I won't come back in 2028 to see the same twelve conlangers picking the same
> grammatical nits they are today.

Don't bother rejoining the mailing list, if it bugs you. It's a sort
of language workshop, bits of grammar all over the cutting room floor,
and that's probably how it's going to stay. But join us on IRC or
Livejournal or the new Facebook groups or somewhere, won't you?
Lojbanistan is getting bigger lately, things are happening, and Lojban
is always developing.

mu'o mi'e la bret.

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On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 4:49 AM, <mungojelly@ixkey.info> wrote:
> To me an obvious first step is to draw a bright line between
> inward-facing language design (tinkering, experimentation,
> exploration), and outward-facing simplification and education. That's
> right, we should lower ourselves to the lie of simplification; don't
> respond to a simple question with a list of exceptions. I believe
> also that we ought to establish a taboo against unsolicited
> corrections: if someone says "mi cilre la lojban." (I learn Lojban,
> incorrectly phrased), we should say "mi gleki lo nu do cilre fi la
> lojban." (I'm happy you're learning about Lojban), positive
> reenforcement and providing a good model, not "Lojban can't be in the
> second place of cilre! The second place of cilre is a fact that's
> learned!", which is true but unhelpfully critical.

I strongly agree.
-Eppcott

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mungojelly@ixkey.info wrote:
> Newbies constantly innocently ask questions
> that raise unresolved issues, even completely unexplored questions.

More importantly, they often ask them in ways that suggest that they
don't really understand what they are asking.

> This has historically been a language-invention society, not a
> language-education society, and naturally when interesting questions
> are raised people voice a cacophony of opinions, but naturally it's
> offputting to a newbie if what seems like a perfectly simple
> question (and what in a finished language would be perfectly a
> simple question) cannot get a simple answer.

I think that even in finished languages, these aren't simple questions.
Usually the non-simple questions have to do with translation.
Translation between languages is a deep subject, prone to error. One
wants to be sure that one understands the speaker's intent, and
sometimes the speaker hasn't really thought about their intent -
especially with usages that are idiomatic.

Moreover, if we are a teaching society, we have to give explanations and
not just simple answers. Explaining the reasoning can be long-winded
and complex, and if you oversimplify the explanation then you aren't
teaching.

> That's inescapable,
> though; many questions really cannot yet be answered well or
> answered at all; Lojban's not done.

But it is done, at least for purposes of answering beginners. All
questions can be answered. The answers might not satisfy non-beginners,
but then that is true of answers about every language.

The real problem is that no one in the community has any real expertise
in language education, and from what I've seen, most of us who have
studied other languages are atypical, so that what works for us often
doesn't work for others.

> None of this excuses us as a community from overcoming such obstacles.
> To me an obvious first step is to draw a bright line between
> inward-facing language design (tinkering, experimentation,
> exploration), and outward-facing simplification and education.

I think that was part of the idea behind the "beginners list".

> That's
> right, we should lower ourselves to the lie of simplification; don't
> respond to a simple question with a list of exceptions.

The problem is identifying what "the simple question" is.

I believe also
> that we ought to establish a taboo against unsolicited corrections: if
> someone says "mi cilre la lojban." (I learn Lojban, incorrectly
> phrased), we should say "mi gleki lo nu do cilre fi la lojban." (I'm
> happy you're learning about Lojban), positive reenforcement and
> providing a good model, not "Lojban can't be in the second place of
> cilre!

I want to avoid correcting you on this, but one can name anything %^)

But I agree with your strategy.

> We should also work on creating explicit structures to help ease new
> people into the language.

That is one reason why, in my early writings, I always provided literal
as well as colloquial translations of all my texts.

> One which seems like a nobrainer to me is to
> indicate to newbies which words (for instance, which of the gismu) to
> learn first,

The gismu list has two built in suggested orders out in columns 155-160.
One is the order I designed into the original unfinished textbook,
which has a number 1 to a for lessons 1-9 and 10+ followed by a letter
which grouped the words in each lesson.
The second is a word usage frequency (sort descending, obviously).

> and then write & speak to newbies with a heavy emphasis on those words.

Outside the beginners list, who writes and speaks specifically to
newbies? Generally we are writing for the larger audience.

> I've been working on creating that sort of structure to
> help newbies into the language, and I've found it a surprising amount
> of work.

I'll agree with that, having tried it.

> Still, it's a shame that such things haven't been anyone's
> priority for so many years.

They were my priority, but I simply didn't have the needed skills.

> It's only very recently that we've even
> had rudimentary things like simple illustrated books or vocabulary
> lists with pictures.

I am not an artist.

Copyright on illustrations is tricky. LLG can't publish anything using
clipart unless we know that the pictures are legally free for such use.
Given that our early history was tied up in intellectual property law,
we have been sensitized to this issue.

What someone does on their own web page is their own business, though.

>> The much commoner (if less "superior") paradigm for community access
>> on the
>> internet is the web based forum.
>
> There is, BTW, a perfectly active Lojban web forum:
>
> http://community.livejournal.com/lojban/
>
> There's been a trickle of activity there forever, and I don't know why
> it's not taken seriously by the community.

I don't do web forums; I don't like the interface. Email and newsgroups
only.

For a time the wiki itself was a sort of web-based forum, with dozens of
people making changes to a variety of pages every day. But it
eventually got so large that no one could keep track of what was
changing. It also didn't involve those of us who didn't wiki. The
community is large but not so large that we can split our efforts into
too many media when people don't have time to follow them. As it is,
apparently great gobs of discussion have apparently taken place on IRC
over the years, but never when I logged in so I gave up on it.

> I'm an active Livejournal
> user myself anyway, so I'm not really aware how hard it is to get an
> account or whatever, is that the problem?

I have don't really even understand what Livejournal is, even. It
sounded like a blogging thing, and that is the impression I've had when
I've looked at Matt's. Some of us old-fogeys just don't really
understand the charm of blogging, and I've never looked into any of
these online interchanges, including the more well known Facebook and
Myspace.

As for getting an account, I find it a pain to open up yet another
account with yet another password that I will forget before the next
time I get around to accessing it. I avoid doing anything that makes me
fill out a registration form.

> Anyway I always follow that group

I don't follow anything that doesn't pump into my email box or a Usenet
newsgroup. By the time I get done with those two, I don't have time to
look for more things to interact with.

> It's about time that Lojbanistan was larger than a couple of
> mailing lists, IMHO.

It is larger.

But the mailing lists are the only place where you will reach a
relatively large audience, and a relatively large percentage of the
community.

> If people would recognize the effort that's been
> put into establishing the Lojban Livejournal community, and consider it
> a real part of Lojbanistan, that would be a good start.

I consider it a real part of Lojbanistan. But I don't have time to
regularly check yet another place for Lojban interaction, especially one
that requires me to log in in order to participate. I have the wiki and
IRC and SecondLife as three other known places that I can do the same
on, all of which are also part of Lojbanistan. But with limited time to
only follow one forum, the email variety works best for me.

> There's still a few missing links between newbies and that living
> language which is just starting to emerge. I see newbies all the time
> on IRC being told not to take any of the learning materials seriously
> because they're all out of date! That must be pretty discouraging.

It is also wrong. The official learning materials embody the official
language. Some people are playing a political game to make their
experimental and proposed usages become official by disparaging the
official stuff.

And of course even if they win, we don't see many people rewriting the
learning materials to reflect the proposals, and they won't really be
part of the language for most of us until someone rewrites CLL, etc. to
reflect them.

lojbab

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