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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Re: tinkerers redux
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Esperanto League N America wrote:

> Nonsense. Esperanto is an established language with a vibrant international
> community which constantly publishes new novels, supports music groups,
> gives birth to babies who grow up speaking Esperanto, etc. This is unique
> in the conlang world. Lojban is still under construction, as is Novial,
> Eurolang, etc. Perhaps Interlingua has stopped being an ongoing project
> (I confess I am unsure about this) but *no other* constructed language
> has developed a stable community and serious body of literature. The
> distinction is quite real and readily verifiable.

Lojban, of course, is not primarily an IAL, in the sense that it was
not designed as one.  It has, however, been used for conversation and
e-conversation by people from different countries.  There is a problem
at present that you can hardly learn Lojban without knowing English.
(One day we hope to get the Lojban materials translated into
Esperanto.)

Lojban is *really*, *really* close to removing the "Under Construction"
sign.  The grammar is stable, and the dictionary (about 5000 Lojban words),
although not formally frozen until 1 July 1997, is *de facto* stable.
An on-line chrestomathy is available, though some of the texts are not
quite in the current version of the language.

See the Lojban Web site at http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ ;
basic information in Esperanto is available at
ftp://ftp.access.digex.net/pub/access/lojbab/brochures/brochure.esperanto.tex ,
which is readable as plain text or printable as TeX.

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
