Re: Let's return to conlanging (was: Li Lingue Modern)

>> As I've said once or twice recently:
>> LET'S GET BACK TO CONLANGING, PLEASE!
>Why are you the one always to make statements like this? You bait someone
>with y
>our
>responses, and when they reply, you then tell everyone let's get back to
>conlanging. It happens over and over again.
I will comment, here, from what I think a different perspective.  The question
really comes down to "what is 'conlanging'?"  When this list started so many
years ago, Loglan and Lojban debates were often discussed, maybe too much.
But now, we don't often post on Lojban here, except to give in-passing
examples of some feature in response to "what if" questions.  And TLI Loglan
is never mentioned at all (well, I can't say that I object too much to this,
but it is somewhat surprising given the list history.)  What has changed?

I have gotten the sense over the years and especially since AUXLANG was
created, that many/most people on the list think that CONLANG is only
for language design, for talking about languages still in their earliest
phase of discussion/proposal.  A language whose design is "done" like
Lojban's seems unwelcome.  I'm not surethat anyone SAYS this, but the attitude
still comes across by the way people respond to certain kinds of posts, of the
sort that Lojban discussions are likely to take.  At best unfriendly, more
often, simply ignored, merely acknowledged and not followed up.

I will note that Lojban probably does NOT belong on AUXLANG - while there are
some advocates of Lojban as an international auxiliary language, we have
convincingly made clear that we are not competing with Esperanto for this role,
and the result has largely been that the types of arguments that are typical
of an auxiliary language comparison debate seldom occur. Indeed, I have briefly
subscribed to AUXLANG at times, and have never seen Lojban even mentioned in
passing, nor have seen a message that I have any temptation to respond to
regarding LOjban.

YOu could have arguments pro and con Lojban and some of its features, but they
would NOT be the typical AUXLANG ones.  Rather they tend to get down into the

"how does design feature X relate to purpose Y of a conlang" and "why are we
doing a conlang anyway" sort.  What I don't see, and what might be relevant,
are discussions of what we did right and wrong in developing Lojban, and what
lessons were learned that might or might not be edifying to those doing other
projects.  This type of posting was common a long time ago, and I think not
solely with regard to Lojban, but to other completed conlang designs.

These kinds of discussion can be crossposeted to Lojban List, but are not
the main purpose of that list - people on Lojban List are not generally there to
learn about comparisons of Lojban and other conlangs, but to learn about Lojban
itself. You can learn about Lojban from a comparative or lesson-learned
postinbut not in the sort of language-learning mode that most Lojban List
subscribers are working.

Lojban still has issues that I think belong in a place like CONLANG, issues that
I would like to see discussed (not just in terms of Lojban).  These are
essentially questions of how one turns a conlang "design" or "project" into a
real conlang - a language that some people use for some of the purposes of
language.

While respecting those whose interest in conlangs is artistic, per the secret
vise, I have posted before that I don't think that a language design or project
is really a language.  A work of art maybe, but so much of what "is" a language
seems missing.  I have scorned, often not too diplomatically, languages that
are created in a couple of months by a single individual as not really being
languages.  I am not particularly inclined to withdraw those arguments, but I
have come to understand that people interested in that sort of thing do not
want to hera that sort of criticism %^).

But in avoiding criticism of language projects that are not intended to go
beyond that stage, I think that CONLANG is missing discussions of just how a
language DOES (or should) go beyond that stage.  Problems of attrracting
speakers, building the large vocabularies (and dictionaries) that one single
person could hardly accomplish (I should say "lexicon" rather than
"vocabulary") in a lifetime, that are needed for "real" use of a language.
Issues of language building through idiom vs. word-coining.  How do you learn
and study a conlang, where there are no native speaker models?  when almost
all who are learning,a re learning at a distance via the Internet? How to wriya
language textbook, or even 10 easy postal lessons.

I miss these things, but realize that people developing conlang *projects*
are not really going to be interested in them, because they do not expect
people to learn and use their design, but rather to "appreciate" it in the
artistic sense.  But the militant anti-AUXLANG attitude of some on the list
leads me to feel that they think this kind of discussion doesn't belong
here at all - that the moment a conlang ceases to be a theoretical and
non-utilitarian project, it should be exiled to AUXLANG, or its
proponents should form their own list (which most such languages have by that
stage of development).

But AUXLANG won't do, and individual conlang lists tend to miss the
multiple-language and inter-language perspective on these sorts of issues that
one would hope to see from the conlang (as opposed to merely the lojban)
community. We, developing and promoting the Lojban community, have things that
we
can learn from the Esperantists, the Interlinguists, and the Klingonists,
(as well as perhaps the now-mostly-dead languages like Ido and Novial that DID
develop some community).  With the exception perhaps of Klingon, the
language communities we can learn most from are auxlang communities, BUT
the types of issues we want to discuss are not per se "auxlang" issues of the
sort that get sent to that list, but are more generic to conlangs of all sorts.

However the AUXLANG exile movement measn that Esperanto is practically a
dirty word in this list.  Lojban is tolerated (sometimes it seems just barely)
and Klingon is ignored.  NGL seems to have disappeared the moment that it
had the viability to support its own list; a few years ago, Voksigid did the
same.  many conlang projects cannot survive in isolation from other conlang
projects, because the people interested in them get drawn back to conlang
or their own projects the moment that the project leaves the common community.

I'm not sure what to do about this if anything.  But maybe hope for a little
attitude shift among some, and a little less haste to exile a discussion that
MIGHT become a AUXLANG war or turn out to be of interest only to a Lojban
List or a Klingon List.  But none of this will reattract posts from
Esperantists and Klingonists that are NOT AUXLANG style advocacy and
argumentation.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab
    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/"
    Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.