Some Sanity? ;-)was: Re: LUNATIC again

Logical Language Group wrote:

> [kut]
Like you, I agree with much of your response, and a part or two, might not totally agree on.

>
> I bl
> I believe, but am not sure of my facts, that Ido was in a similar position
> prior to WWI, and actually had the highest number of speakers other than
> Esperanto and Volapu:k in its heydey. Occidental may have been active, but I don't
> think its peak was anywhere near as high as its predescessors. This
> was largely because WWI largely killed off the idealism that led to the IAL
> movement, and the Depression and WWII destroyed what little was left.
Not only was the idealism killed off, but many of the users of these languages. As
far as the numbers of Occidentalists versus Idists, it appears the world has
temporarily lost the history of that time. Idists flocked to Occidental, along with Idiom
Neutralists, Esperantists, Medialists, Universalists, etc. And, even
Novialists. Many who began to developed new languages during that time modeled much that
they did on de Wahl's Occidental. It actually ended up that the two top
languages at that time, membership wise, was Esperanto and Occidental. The others
virtually died out at this time, or began dramatic declines. It appears that
Occidental was beginning to hit its stride and grow like crazy, then came the war. After
the war, Esp. survived, Occidental did also, without many of their key
people who were killed. Then there seems to have been a vacuum till the late 1940's
when news came out that IALA was going to be presenting Ila to the world. That
was another blow to the struggling Occidentalists, and many Occidentalists went
over to Ila. I don't know how the appearance of Ila affected the Esperanto
movement.
Not much I suspect. However, in spite of this Occidental remained steady and
growing up through the early 1960's, when the toll of losses to Ila really
began to
tell. In the meantime, by 1951-53, as I recall, Ila took a nosedive when it's
financial backer died. This helped Occidental and it began to grow till Ric
Berger got
in a tiff with the Occidentalists because they would not accept a change he
wanted. So, he switched sides and started promoting Ila heavily. Many
Occidentalists
followed him. Here I'm not sure of the timing of events, but it appears Ila just held
it's own till the internet came into use, and now, it appears to be growing
again, as is Occidental. I read a post recently that the Ila list averaged around
49-53 on the list. Not counting users who are not on the list. They seem to be
doing a fairly good job now of promoting themselves.

> [kut]
> Rob again:
> >[kut]
> >If I knew it were no problem
> >, I
> >would use more Occidental here and on Auxlang as a form of communication
> >versus using quotes as I have done in the past to let people see what
> >Occidental looks like.
>
> I would have no problem, but I wouldn't try to read the posts, sothe effect is
> to lose part of your audience - maybe most of it.  Same would be true if I
> had tried to post this in Lojban.  No one would have read it.
The one exception being, if you did read it, you could read it. I'm not sure I, or
anyone else here could read Lojban without studying it. Maybe you could post a
sample of what it looks like sometime.

> >However, it  was designed to be used for communication with people who had
> > not
> >studied it, and spoke different languages. So, here and on auxlang there are
> >som e
> >potential problems with doing this. One of them certainly is, we all to my
> >knowl edge
> >can use English, and there are no speakers here who speak other than English.
>
> I am quite sure that there are native speakers of other-than-English here.  All
> who read conlang oibviosuly read English, and most presumably can write it
> at some level of competance, but the only reason for posting only in English is
> because probably no other language can be read by even a large fraction of the
> reasdership.
[kut] Which brings up a question I just thought of asking an hour or two ago, and
this is as good a time as any to ask. Are there any similar "conlang" or
"auxlang"
lists in any other natlang, where they are trying to do the same thing. Or, are
English speakers the only ones actively on the net doing this? I would love to
use
Occidental on such a list.

Al l sue,
Bob, x+