Re: Anybody Out There

[Scott Brickner <sjb@UNIVERSE.DIGEX.NET>]

Pat Gooley writes:
>        Shortly after subscribing, I got a message asking "Is this List
>Dead?"  I don't know -- is it?

Welcome aboard.  It's not dead, it's just resting.

>        Any Lojbanis out there who care to respond, please consider my
>posiiton and that of the person who queried me.  On the other hand, if
>everyone else is gone, Nina, I guess we can create a new Lojban according to
>any mutually acceptable rules we devise.  Think of the opportunities in
>this!  Tolkein created dwarvish and elvish out of his expertise in ancient
>English forms; what might we do?  The world is our oyster; if the rules of
>Lojban have fallen on hard days, we'll just create our own.

As I understand it, the current "official" state of Lojban is that the
Logical Languages Group is currently working on getting the official
baseline grammar and dictionary published, so they aren't available to
participate in the mailing list as much as they (or others) might like.

The rules are fairly stable (as much by fiat as by consensus, in at least
some areas, but that's not wholly bad), and you can get most of the
materials by FTP or web browser from the archive site(s).

>        Assuming anyone reads this, let me introduce myself.  I'm married to
>my high school sweetheart (21 years this week),  who is in Virginia running
>our horse farm (Arabs and Morgans).    I currently teach Conversational
>English at a university in Korea.  I have studied, to various degrees (sort
>of best to worst) Russian, Arabic, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Korean,
>Japanese, and Esperanto.  I also have a mean Double Dutch.  My local
>roommate has been known to call me a cunning linguist.  I'm a retired U.S.
>Navy officer, and slightly to the right of Genghis Khan  politically.   I
>also have a pretty fair command of technical subjects, including
>thermodynamics, physics, optics, ballistics, probability,  and radar
>transmission/signal theory, which really makes me a strange duck.  Add to
>that, I have a more than passing interest in D&D, including some PC high
>level illusionists, druids, and rangers, and you know I'm trouble!

There is an infrequently published (and possibly dormant) FAQ for the
list which contains similar such self-introductions of many of the
Lojbani and written in Lojban.  I'm sure if you'd like to undertake
rewriting yours in Lojban, that the FAQ maintainer will happily add
it.  Maybe he'll even be persuaded to repost it.

to .oiro'i .u'i le kamna'ecne cu terzmadu la djengis xan do leka grivlici'e toi

>        Seriously, I do enjoy learning about languages, even if I speak none
>but English well.  If anyone out there is even considering being on speaking
>terms, let me know.  I'm really a fairly nice guy.

Lojban's relatively short history means that there really aren't a lot
of speakers.  Unlike, say, the Esperanto lists, there's still a lot of
English posted here.  On the other hand, posts in Lojban are enormously
welcome.  Even if LLG is to busy to read them, the rest of us hackers
are will.