Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1992 08:00:47 -0500 From: VILVA@VIIKKI21.HELSINKI.FI Subject: CAFE: The Condensed Papers (long: 40kb) << From Lojban Canterbury Tales to The Ckafybarja Newsletter >> This is a record of the Development of the Ckafybarja Project, the Main Ideas, the Conversations and Differences of Opinion concerning the Characterization of the Cafe Personnel. The English Background Descriptions accumulated till the end of August. This is NOT a straight record of the conversations on the net. I have deleted a lot of material -- either redundant or not essential for the project at the present stage. I have also taken the liberty of making some minor changes to the text following the deletions so that the resulting joints are more natural. ************************************************************** A. lojbab's original Lojban Canterbury Tales proposal lojbab: The geminal start of English as a literary language was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and someone mentioned that Italian has a similar medieval literary landmark, the Decameron. Perhaps other languages as well. The essence of the Canterbury Tales is that they are a bunch of 1st person tales, rich and colorful, often baudy. Why not write something similar for Lojban, or at least start to do so. We can get a lot of people involved, who need only commit to writing a single short tale - a page long would be fine. A couple of the more expert Lojbanists - Nick, Ivan, and Mark, for example, might do some longer tales, perhaps about characters that might have a more complex story. One charm of the Canterbury Tales is the variety of personalities of the characters - we can achieve that by having many authors. Stylistic consistency isn't necessary, since different people have different ways of talking. One rule - if you have a specific story idea, whether you want to write it or not: don't talk about it in English. The stories are to be LOJBAN stories, and whatever appeal they have, as the first Lojban literature, will be emphasized by their not existing in English first. If you have trouble with the language, you can ask how-to-say-it questions here on Lojban List, or send messages privately to Nick, Ivan, Colin, John Cowan, Mark Shoulson, or me Less experienced Lojbanists might team up on a story, in which case you can talk privately with each other in whatever language about your story, or if necessary, with the one experienced Lojbanist that you interact with from the above list. Veijo: I don't think the way to founding original Lojban literature can be found in emulation. It takes great literary talent to transform an existing story into something worthwhile -- not a mere imitation. A literature arises from an existing cultural and linguistic background and the only thing we have at hand is a half-baked language. This is the fact we must start from. If we are to lay the foundations of a literature we must look at the world -- the language -- we have. What is the world of Lojban like? What sets it apart from the rest? If you take Lojban sans tanru, lujvo and le'avla it presents a remarkably Platonian view of the world. The most distinguishing feature of gismu and many cmavo is that they describe a very ideal world, every word brings out the essence, the underlying principle of a class of phenomena. In most natural languages the general is described in terms which are either alien or complex, in Lojban the opposite prevails. This makes it possible to present a distilled view of the surrounding world without resorting to unnatural expressions and also to contrast the general and the particular in a single utterance or even a single bridi. The avoidance of tanru and lujvo can be thought of as another form of controlled and recognizable ellipsis -- only the essential is expressed and the particular is suppressed. Other areas where Lojban excels are the tense system, the attitudinal and emotional indicators and of course the connectives. We have a very rich apparatus offering unprecedented opportunities for expression but do we have something to say? I think we mustn't hurry. We need the stories, the literature, but we must not push things. We must first try to see the world -- a slice of the present, some particular past, the future -- through Lojban 'glasses'. The literary world we eventually create must have a distinct Lojban flavour to it, it mustn't be a mere re-representation of some other world. It doesn't suffice to avoid translation, the world must be conceptualized in a Lojban way from the ground up. I don't think the stories need much of a plot, the settings give enough opportunities for fruitful utilization of the language. Even quite ordinary things can form the scaffolding around which the story unfolds. If you read the stories by e.g. Ray Bradbury, quite many of them have a negligible plot. The something hangs in the atmosphere, in many little things. That, of course, takes great talent. I don't know whether any of us can muster that but we ought to be able to utilize Lojban for the necessary special effects -- with due constraint. The thing mustn't be overdone, we are not aiming to produce a linguistic fire-works. The language ought to be utilized subtly to produce a mosaic of shadow and sun-light, soft generalizations against which sharp detail can be engraved, the dull monotonous every-day or whatever described in a few, quick indicators and the richer moments of life in ever increasing detail using the full array of tools available for the task. If we don't try to reproduce the world in the way we are accustomed to see it, to use the imagery of our respective native languages -- or our secondary languages -- but try to see our surroundings through the Lojban glasses I think we may find quite many things worth depicting. Nick: Wow. I mean that quite sincerely. I mean, when I bemoan lojban stylistics, I usually see the trees --- the complexities of nesting, the uncertainties of place structures in flux (lujvo and gismu), the markedness of attitudinals. You, Veijo, seem to have struck at the essence. It is absolutely true that Lojban (and any language) sustain their own world (it is also true that one should not be too flashy in pursuing the manifestations of this world, as happens often in Esperanto literature); it is also true that exploring this world is the great task awaiting lojban literature. And it is even more true that my translations so far have not done any such exploration (interestingly enough, David Twery's ckafyzda diary *did* --- not just because it was original writing, but because it looked at the caf'e in the staccato, explicit way we will come to expect of lojban. I see now the diary is very much worth publishing in JL after all). Veijo: Expression is a two-way process. It is no use having an elegant expression if no one can really feel what you are trying to say. In English - or any other living language - we build our expressions to rest on the solid foundation of the linguistic imagery which forms large parts even of the unconscious mind of the potential readers. In Lojban we have nothing like this available. Even the most advanced of us will have to struggle - probably for years to come - to attain a level of competency where reading is no more an intellectual exercise but a living experience. To really feel the language requires that it flows in you relatively effortlessly. You must have a background against which to contrast the author's way of saying things. Esperanto is so much like the mainstream Indo-European languages that the early literary efforts could build on the existing imagery. Lojban is conceptually so different that we have no such easy way out of our predicament. The imagery will have to be different otherwise we may end up using modals to rebuild the alien imagery. At this stage translations may contain seeds of peril as we don't yet have a living tradition to protect the language from the dominance of external influences. I don't implicate that we ought to exclude these influences totally. The language needs the common imagery of the whole mankind and perhaps even large sections of the heritage of the main cultures but this imagery must trickle in in a controlled way, not as an avalanche. **************************************************************** **************************************************************** B. The Lojban Kalevala Project => The Ckafybarja Project lojbab: With the impending completion of the first Lojban dictionary, it is time to set forth on people writing originally IN Lojban (rather than in translation from other languages) and hence to explore the unique point-of-view and style that Lojban's unusual nature might bring to narrative (the assumption of the uniqueness of this point-of-view actually assumes Sapir-Whorf is true, but we'll ignore that problem for now). Per my intent, we had a long discussion at LogFest, and Veijo's comments about basing the story(s) on a uniquely Lojbanic world-view, coupled with Nick Nicholas's identification of what writings seemed to him to best represent a budding Lojban culture, underlay much of the discussion and its current resolution. The goal is Lojban stories written from a common narrative starting point, written by as many different people as possible, each of varying Lojban skill levels. We came up with a scenario that allows, and even encourages, a motley collection of stories of varying lengths. We decided to draw on the limited range of 'Lojban culture' that exists today. The first such element identified was the "Jimbob" 'rant' (David Twery's description of it) that Nick started on conlang and summarized on Lojban List, and others followed upon. Then we turned to David Twery's coffee-house (ckafyzda), which Nick has identified as the first authentic-seeming "Lojban world-view" text. We devised an interesting, Lojban-allegorical coffeehouse which is interesting enough to serve as the subject of stories, as well as a backdrop for the telling of stories. The concept is a coffeehouse with an international flavor in which Lojban is spoken. The atmosphere is vaguely contemporary, but somewhat timeless. Indeed, one idea was to leave the outside of the coffeehouse, i.e. its locale, essentially unspecified. The coffeehouse has 6 employees, each a representative of a culture using one of the source languages for Lojban (There was a lot of debate over whether to use a British or American representative for English, and I would have suggested Australian in honor of Nick, but people settled on American because unfortunately the majority of Lojbanists, who are mostly Americans, may be familiar only with American culture, and we don't want to shut people out of this effort for cultural blindness.) We were able to identify a number of "roles" to be filled in a coffeehouse: manager, cook, waiter/waitress, busboy, cashier. But some of these are seen as of a lower, subservient nature as compared with others. Rather than risk association of some culture being seen as stereotypically subservient by tying a character of that culture to a particular role (e.g., the Chinese busboy), the workers rotate jobs, giving the job of cook to a different person each night, with the effect that the menu is both international, exotic, and a bit unpredictable. The manager was assigned to the Chinese character, based on Chinese as the most populous of the Lojban languages. A friend who came to LogFest with Karen Stein, Phil (whose last name I never did learn), wrote up three descriptions based on this concept. Description #2 had a few supporters, but no one was against it provided that the windows were removed from the description, and thus the need to describe what is outside the windows. Meanwhile there is further work to be done, some of which requires knowledge of Lojban, some that requires only imagination. More details of the setting need to be worked out, eventually giving enough information that a detailed floor plan of the coffeeshop can be drawn, with locations of everything marked, so that people writing stories can be consistent in describing the scene wherein the story is told (given that the exterior environment is undefined, there is no particular need for consistency, or even implied truth, in the stories themselves, but it was felt that this collection, being written by a large number of authors of varying styles, needed to have some one thing that all authors could share and rely upon to the finest detail. Indeed the coffeehouse description will be described and finalized in English, to make sure that everyone understands all the details in a consistent manner. It also allows people to use a variety of Lojban expressions and forms to describe the English-defined setting. Thus the descriptions by various authors will not read exactly the same, yet the place they are describing will obviously be the same place. We welcome and indeed encourage people to write descriptions in Lojban, recognizing that the description will have to be translated into clear English. But this gives people something to write about in Lojban, and you can if you choose use your Lojban text as a starting point for an eventual story for the collection. The third phase of the scenario definition is to define the six characters in enough depth that people can include them in the backdrop to their stories and have them recognizably be the same people. The details should range from gender, age, and appearance, to personality, distinctive mannerisms, and outside interests that might serve as jumping off places for a story when the indicated person comes up to the table with a tray of food, or coffee. This phase will be conducted in the manner of a contest followed by a vote. Write a character sketch of one of the characters, putting as much or as little detail into your description as you care to. The contest will be announced in JL17 (but I'd like to have a couple of samples by then), and thus people have plenty of time to write good descriptions before a voting a couple of months later, with the results of all phases of this introductory work appearing in JL18, I hope. All those who submit any ideas, text, description, or otherwise indicate definite interest in participating in the project will be eligible to vote. Again, character descriptions can be written in Lojban, but we will also need English translations. However, the polycultural polylinguistic background of the characters has led me to identify a fourth task that the more skilled Lojbanists can start on now, and which is independent of the actual descriptions of the characters (or at least it may be so). Each of our 6 cultural representatives will be a native speaker of their own language - Lojban is the lingua franca that all share, and the lingua franca of those who patronize the coffeehouse as well (hence stories told in Lojban therein). But Lojban has many possible styles, and some of these styles will be dependent on the native language of the speakers. Thus, the Hindi speaker may be prone to SOV-order sentences, the Chinese speaker to strange-to-English- speakers tanru, and the Arabic speaker to flowery metaphor. The Russian speaker may choose lujvo forms that are heavy in consonant clusters, whereas the Chinese speaker will minimize clusters and maximize vowels. I don't pretend to know enough of the non-English source languages to try to describe them in any detail, but some Lojbanists like Ivan Derzhanski probably do; others might be willing to research. The result will be perhaps a short sample of Lojban "conversation" and of "narrative" styles for each of the six characters (perhaps each of them describing the same scene to make for ready comparison), along with an English language description of the essential linguistic ingredients that comprise the style, so that others can try to emulate the styles when writing. The ideal will thus be, along with distinctive personalities for the 6 characters, a distinctive style of Lojban speech that will identify the characters and also lend authenticity to the style. Description #2 As I walked under the crossed climbing axes, and into the coffeehouse, I felt I was in a place designed to give one the feeling of putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes. [The large arched windows filled the dining area with light, and since all of the booths were lined along the outside, every booth had a superb view of the .] The benches were made of old soft oak, in which many tales and symbols had been carved. On the bench I was seated was the inscription: "Members of the first sandpit expedition to find the first digger, or traces thereof- 198?" The table also bore other marks of former patrons who had drank their selections and transcribed their feelings with pitons.The walls were littered with climbing apparel and debris in what might charitably have been termed a collage. There were the rusting remains of pitons and hooks abutting practically new lengths of the latest high test rope. Opposite the door from which I had entered was a ladder - a climbing ladder, of course. The ladder reached to the ceiling, and a solid-looking trap door that made me wonder of the unknown relics that lay beyond, and the stories they might hold. Underneath these visible artifacts were the dour reminders of the primary business of this establishment-coffee. There were full wooden bins of coffee from just about every place in the world, with or without caffeine. The cook was visible to all and in the process of developing the latest creation on the current menu, and not without some debate about the amount of spice the particular dish required. This happy riot provided the counterpoint to the hissing, and boiling of a near endless stream of coffee beans in response to the always cold, often frustrated, and very determined clientele. . . ____ Chinese- Manager Russian, American, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish - Cook/Wait/Bus/Dishwasher Rotating Menu, With Chinese overtones because of manager International Menu *************** DISCUSSION **** Ivan: Whoever wants to write a story with Chinese, (Hindu) Indians, or Arabs among the characters had better be _very_ familiar with the corresponding cultures. I wouldn't venture anything of the sort, and therefore make the following _Counterproposal_. Don't specify any national identity or cultural background for the characters. Make them representatives of an abstract, undetermined, or fictitious nation. In this case they might be Lojbanis by birth, for example. Otherwise you risk to end up with a story that no Arab (say) would find plausible. Veijo: As a quick first comment I support these opinions. It's better to make these 'background' characters as neutral as possible so that the writers don't get into unnecessary problems. The characters and the storytellers/observers in the actual stories are another matter. A visitor dropping into the cafe isn't observing the 'common' world when in the cafe. His story or the story he is listening to while in the cafe may describe various ethnic/national/linguistic groups but the narrator's relationship to the cafe ought to reflect his relationship to the Lojbanic culture. He may be a fullblown lojbo or still have one foot in his original culture which will affect the way he describes the settings, the balance between superficial and essential details. Maybe even the male/female dichotomy is superfluous in this context. Nick: Neutral, yes, but not characterless. Exploring stylistic stereotypes (the sledgehammer JL15 I'm prone to) should be fun. I already had in mind a tanruist, an attitudinalist, an anaphorist and an SVOist, as well as the obligatory Prolog speaker :) I think the monomania of exploring every facet of familiar objects in a familiar surrounding (the old brick thing) is highly pertinent to this do. Plots and tales aren't essential; a laid-back, look-at-what-everyone-else-is-doing-and-how-that-crack-on-the-wall- runs attitude is just as appropriate here. Mark: Yeah, keep them neutral. I don't think you have to go out of your way to try to convince me they're native lojbananas, and I always feel funny about overusing the rafsi-as-name bit; you just can't trust it. I *like* the idea of giving them distinct, but distinctly lojbanic, speaking styles, BUT perhaps it would be better not to go too carefully this route, and play with that in one of your own stories with a few patrons you bring in (if you think you can do it and still make the story work, which Ivan fears wouldn't happen). Remember: If you want something in a character, it can walk in the door. The *patrons*, over which each writer has more or less complete control, are the ones which make the stories click. The staff is background. You plan might be a good idea, Nick, but it may make writing a real challenge for normal folk. Remember, the staff are characters that everyone has to live with. If you want a few characters that you can deal with that have such speech styles, the door's right over there, and here they come. It's unfair to ask a beginning speaker to incorporate such clevernesses into his writings by making characters common to all the stories have these traits. Remember, though, that when you tweak the background or the staff, you're messing with something that *all* the writers have to live with. Don't build your world and force everyone else to live in it; bring your world into everyone else's. In fact, if you really need the waiter to be a certain way, you might even consider having a replacement waiter that day, just to be on the safe side. lojbab: You ask for several changes, all of which remove detail from the persons and scenery details. To write a good story, the details MUST be present. If we do not specify the culture of the characters, they will have no culture; i.e. they will be colorless, which is exactly what we don't want. (IVAN : Not necessarily. They simply won't be identified with any one of the existing cultures.) Actually they won't be - with mostly Americans in the Lojban community, they will all end up as nondescript American in culture. I would rather attempt and fail to capture hints of a foreign culture than not to attempt at all, and have the result seem too American. We may not succeed in capturing a true Arabic or Hindi culture (but then we might come close), but we will get a somewhat non-American culture. One would expect in any case that with people representing 6 cultures interacting on a constant basis that none of the characters would be 'pure' in representing their culture - after all, they do not live with their own people (at least not likely). The better writers can invent stories and worlds of their own, and characters as well. Others may choose to have their story rest in an interaction between patrons and staff in the coffeeshop, which itself is a basis for a lot of powerful story imagery, and, given some preparatory work in character development of the staff, allows people with perhaps less skill or imagination to still tell a reasonable story, concentrating on the Lojban and NOT on the creative work that not all of us do so well. Veijo: There are many facets to creativeness. It is, of course, quite difficult to create truly flesh-and-blood characters. But telling about a person known to everybody may be equally difficult. To be consistent with the characterization without merely copying, to add something or just to express it somewhat differently takes skill at many levels. Actually, it might be much more difficult than making a quick sketch of a stranger or adding depth to some your own creation -- even in your own native language. Fitting a limited expressiveness in Lojban to a detailed microcosm may be in fact harder than creating the details on the fly from the bits and pieces of the Lojban you do master. A detailed English plan is, however, a double-edged sword. It helps, as you said, people to visualize this microcosm. On the other hand people must get rid of this visualization not to be hampered by it (jumping from English -- or Finnish or what so ever -- to Lojban already requires a certain amount of flexibility of mind). It will also be quite necessary to transform the plan into a Lojban plan to help the less experienced Lojbanists to handle the basic premises. I used the word 'transform' quite intentionally instead of the word 'translate' as I feel that a translation isn't sufficient, it is quite necessary to try to remove the 'alien' imagery. At another -- simpler -- level it is necessary to give the required lujvo and the ways of describing certain quite elementary things: distances, relationships, the way things hang together. It might be useful to have a kind of workshop (on the List) where the novice lojbo would be taught to navigate in this verbal VR (virtual reality). We could tackle this storywriting also from another angle starting from the fact that most of us aren't very advanced in Lojban. If we consider the writing not as an 'instantaneous' act of creation but as a lengthy process coincident and in synchronism with learning Lojban, we could see a writer entering a 'gismu-type' ckafyzda and slowly working his way towards a lujvo like a sculptor uncovering his masterpiece from beneath the enclosing mass of stone. For the writer the story wouldn't be just a story but a record of his journey to la jbotur -- lojbo tutra, the domain of Lojban, Lojbania -- not in the form of a description of the process but as an allegorical map where distances are measured on the scale of the language. This kind of process might help people to find their own voice and to cultivate the innate creativity each one of us is sure to possess. Nick: And with what you (Veijo) say about characterisation, too, the solution is a broad-brush sketch that allows us room to maneuver in; not too detailed, not too vague. Well, that can certainly be handled. I think a Lojbanisation of the brushstroke plan will not be limiting at all; people do really need that help in simply keeping a narrative going. As the mass of writers becomes more familiar with Lojban, the Cafe will be sketched out in greater detail in the story, and more successfully, with the end result possibly quite distant from what we'd anticipated at the start. The more expert of us reinforce those less expert in the describing. lojbab: The plan is that there be 1 coffeeshop, and that the description be suitably refined in English. People will develop refined descriptions of 6 characters (or some other number if we abandon the 6 cultures idea - but I don't think you can have a 'cultureless person' and have the character detail that I think the others want in the shared characters), which will then be voted on, which means the characters must also be defined in English. (Nick : I think it's perfectly possible, but then, I think we're also looking for different things in character definition. What maketh a Hindi speaking character? And of course, as background, they don't have to be that detailed anyway.) After we have the basic scenario settled, the material can be translated into Lojban, and people can set up teleconferences of whatever kind to help each other in writing, or whatever, but while the project is still in the formative stage, we must make provision for those who want to learn Lojban but haven't yet done so, and for those who do not have net access (which is 90% of the community). (Nick: Cool. Veijo's navigation of Virtual reality can be done once the description is in place, and the description should not be exhaustive.) ************************ The initial writings stage Nick: (After Veijo's entry to the Cafe) Veijo speaks of {.ui.o'u}; that's the feeling I want in the cafe too. A boisterous place, sure, with lots of emphasis on the {ka vrici}, but also a very {mela'ezo.i'u} place. The door is nothing too fancy; plain, wooden, touch heavy, not pretentious. The climbing axes certainly have been positioned informally (maybe even not perfectly symmetrically?) What with the suggested rural setting and the benches, I'm put in mind of soft *damp* oak, and murky late afternoon light. I don't think the place need be spotlighted, in any case; the can't-look-outside windows will do. There's not just tales and symbols, of course; there's a lot of good old fashioned graffiti (no need to be too solemn about it.) The place is, I suggest, small and intimate, with the {vrici} paraphernalia on the walls haphazard and competing for space, rather than formally set out, museum style. No more than ten benches (reasonably sized, though). The ladder stays, but it has nothing to do with {le lisri be le serti}; an imposing marble staircase would be a touch *too* imposing. The menu is on display just to the right of the partition behind which the cook is visible; handwritten, with the le'avla defined at the bottom of the list in the six source languages. The coffee bins are along the walls, I take it? (Beneath the artifacts.) The waiter does some serving, but for the most part sits with the customers and socialises. The cook has most of his/her arguments with the dishwasher, sometimes carrying the arguments outside the kitchen and asking for support in his debates amongst hapless customers, slapstick-style (hm, I'm going against the rotation thing --- others may countersupport it); I don't know what a busboy is either; and the Manager (and the sixth man/woman out for the night) sit together and overlook the scene. I don't know if it's worthwhile giving the Manager his/her own table, and a small table rather than a bench at that; but I would like the Manager to be a bit more formal than the rest, a voice of authority amidst the chaos, and somewhat set apart --- a big gun in a story, held in reserve. This might be a biiiiit silly, but maybe a small bookcase of NL dictionaries and Lojban references on the side? And the cafe, I thiiiiink, should be a bit of a bastion of lojbanism, or at least lojbanism-aware --- which would give us the opportunity of satirising traits of the current or future community in it. The visitors, of course, don't have to particularly like or think about Lojban --- it's by no means an exclusive venue. Nick: (Nick's entry) [] I swiftly and yet grandly make my entrance through the front door, which is heavy and plain. Opening the door took a bit of effort, and made it necessary to push. What is behind the door is illuminated by mild afternoon light, and is comfortably small. There's about ten tables, I dunno. [] There's some noise and a bit of merriment. [] The walls are decorated by miscellanea, unharmonious by the usual standards. The two climbing axes above the front door aren't quite symmetrical. Nor are the other objects on the walls --- a pea on a cushion, for example, an old signboard saying "Best Tailor in the Whole Town", and a belt with "Cinderelwood" written on it. I look at the table-top where I'm sitting. It's been inscribed with lots of stuff, in Lojban, Esperanto, English, even German. The German stuff is in Fraktur script. [] I could take an ice-pick or climbing-pick from the wall to my left.[] "Oh, you could have a Tasty-T; it's our most recent purchase."[] While this has been going on, the cook and the dishwasher in the kitchen have been loudly and enthusiastically arguing. The cook occasionally comes out and asks the patrons for their opinion about the topic he's debating.[] The manager, wearing a suit, is talking to Veijo. [] New people enter and loudly greet those already there, who are typically telling stories. ********************** Nick: (after Veijo's second etude) I feel veeery hesitant in any interaction with the staff with their personas still not settled. If people don't like the Manager (and {jatna} does seem to be the only word we have for "boss" or "manager") being imperious, they'll be *very* unhappy if I portray him like that. So for now, let's not probe into the background characters too deeply. The even greater danger is in sketching interactions with Real Life people. Veijo and I are about to start talking, and I'd like neither of us to make potentially annoying presumptions about the other's persona. So one should be wary in this kind of thing. Dave Bowen: The owner and manager [or perhaps just the owner or just the manager] of the Cafe Chalet is a man of mystery. It's easy enough to see him, either hiking among the hills surrounding the village or conversing with the customers as he makes his rounds. But any questions about his life before coming to the village are met with vague replies and a quick shift in the topic of conversation. There are stories that he used to be a climber himself. A climbing accident, so the story goes, which killed his lover while the two of them were attempting a major climb led to his retirement from the sport. It is said that much of the equipment which decorates the interior of the Chalet is his. In appearance he's a big man, with light brown hair and green eyes. In summer his ruddy complexion turns to a golden tan and his hair lightens to the point where it almost matches his skin color. On the slopes, he is often seen in lederhosen and a green alpine hat. While in the Chalet, these are replaced by conservative gray or navy business suits. Only his bright paisley ties and an occasional brightly colored vest show hints of the boy hidden beneath the serious businessman. Attempts to determine his background from his speech have been unsuccessful. Though his English shows most of the signs of British English, it shows no signs of any other European accent being mixed in. His German, French and Italian are equally indistinguishable from those spoken by native speakers and he has shown no problems conversing with visitors from other parts of Europe and Asia. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** C. The Cafe Jbolaz Newsletter proposal Nick: Every two months, an electronic *and* snailmail set of Cafe descriptions gets mailed out --- this is necessary to allow the off-net participants to keep up to date. For net participants, a month after posting their cafe article on the net, they must submit a revision incorporating all comments made. For those off net, the newsletter ed forwards all comments (net and snail), allowing the contributor to post a revision, say, four months later. The newsletter is all-Lojban, and people (preferably on the net, and preferably grammar- competent) can take turns editing it. The newsletter is cafe *only*, other literature being forwarded as usual for JL consideration. Cafe articles need not be tales at all --- *any* piece to do with the cafe (like Veijo's navigation or my Fraktur rant) is legit, as is any genre. If we all approve on this, the newsletter can be announced in JL. Some central on-net personage should be nominal editor (forwarding mail to the editor de jour who must commit him/herself to passing all articles through the current parser, and glossing lujvo as appropriate.) lojbab: I see no problem with such a newsletter, but feel that it is appropriate AFTER the getting started period of the first two issues of JL, which will serve to give more people a chance to decide to participate who are in the snailmail set. After the next two issues of JL, I suspect that there will be enough people motivated by the project AND skilled enough at Lojban, that there will be more than just Nick and Veijo trying to write stuff that is appropriate, including some people no on net. When the non-netters feel comfortable in participating, then I personally will have no qualms in letting the project go where it will, including letting whatever leaders have emerged at that point assume both control and responsibility. I would hope of course that LLG would be offered first publication rights on the results, as well as to get as much archival data as possible on this, the first organized-and-skilled creative writing effort in what is obviously about to become a living language. Veijo: The original plan called for stories told at the Cafe. We have already had differences of opinion concerning background details. Now Nick is proposing that we widen the scope to include also other kinds of related literary works. (NB my srinuntroci or navigations as Nick calls them are just kind of etudes, not meant to be the stories, though widening the scope will make them eligible for publication.) In principle I am for this change of policy as it makes it possible also for the less advanced lojbo to participate in the creative process. It is much less demanding to produce a snapshot of a few lines than to produce something like Nick's Fraktur rant. We could have many more people contributing if this were an acceptable option. I think the non-netters would profit most from this change as longer stories do need more rounds of feedback from others. Nick: Certainly the editorship need not be formal. Let me attempt to refine my proposal: the editor du jour is entrusted with the typographic preparation of the journal, the style preferred in his/her number (namely, subjective minor issues of expression --- lujvo phrasing, optional punctuation and spelling, minor grammatical errors --- can be left to them). They also do the chasing up of correspondence and editing of discussions eventuating from articles published in their issue, adjusting the work accordingly and resubmitting it on the expiry date to the current editor for publication. What I'm saying is that a given ed du jour is responsible for all articles first published by him. For example: suppose I, Mark, and Colin are eds du jour, and, oh, Nancy Lebovitz (say) submits an article that gets corrected and published during my editorship. *I* then, and not Mark, follow up any subsequent discussion and correspondence about Nancy's article, *I* make the suitable adjustments, and hand the finished result, and only the more interesting highlights of the discussion, to Colin (say) for republication. I suppose that means that my norms, rather than Colin's, go for the republished article; but at least work gets shared out that way. The reviewing of text is of course carried out by all subscribers to the newsletter, on net or off. But one person has to tie all the threads together at the end, and take responsibility for touching up the text in accordance with the criticisms made; let that person be the first publication's ed du jour. The editor in chief takes care of the editorial; his/her address appears in the newsletter as the address to which all correspondence is directed; has a certain amount of veto as to article content (checking for consistency and so forth), vetts the newsletter just before publication, and reports to the wider community through JL as needed. Well, the LLG can have all the archival stuff it wants (and with editorship a net activity, there'll be plenty of it). I'm not sure about publication rights though. I envisage a periodical publication, rather than a book-form corpus, that certainly is distributed by the LLG, and sold at a profit to the LLG, but which is produced by a decentralised body, which is not necessarily equivalent to the LLG. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Veijo Vilva vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Sep 22 08:09:45 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 22 Sep 1992 08:09:43 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3122; Tue, 22 Sep 92 08:08:30 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 4230; Tue, 22 Sep 92 08:08:28 EDT Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1992 07:58:38 -0500 Reply-To: vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi Sender: Lojban list From: VILVA@VIIKKI21.HELSINKI.FI Subject: CAFE: Summary and Condensed Papers X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: I have prepared a summary of the Cafe Project and condensed the Cafe postings until the end of August. I am sending these articles separately. The Summary is about 13kb and the Condensed Papers about 40kb (the original was 200kb+). I have also prepared (mainly for my own archives) pretty LaTeX versions. If somebody is interested I can send either DVI files (UUENCODED) or the corresponding PostScript files (ASCII). These are much easier to read than the raw ASCII files. If there is enough interest I could also post these versions (and subsequent LaTeX formatted stuff). So let me know. Veijo ------------------------------------------------------------------ Veijo Vilva vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Sep 22 08:10:06 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 22 Sep 1992 08:10:04 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3132; Tue, 22 Sep 92 08:08:51 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 4278; Tue, 22 Sep 92 08:08:49 EDT Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1992 07:58:40 -0500 Reply-To: vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi Sender: Lojban list From: VILVA@VIIKKI21.HELSINKI.FI Subject: CAFE: Summary X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: _A Summary of the Present State of The Ckafybarja Project_ I have collected all the postings concerning the Project and the first submitted Lojban stories. The total volume of the postings (excluding the mail headers) has already exceeded 200kb. Probably very few of us have read through all this material and are fully aware of the situation. Also quite many new people have started following the list during the last few weeks and almost certainly have only a very vague notion about what's going on. I have prepared a condensed version of 'The Ckafybarja Papers' which I'll post separately. This version (about 40kb) contains edited postings pertaining to the background and the English descriptions of the Cafe. This posting tries to summarize the present stage of the project. I'll not go into details as they are available in the Papers. *************** Note: this is NOT an official document of the LLG. The views presented are my personal views. *************** The Purpose of The Ckafybarja Project The purpose of the project is to encourage people to create original Lojban stories which have the following common features: - as already stated the stories are ORIGINAL Lojban stories, not translations from other languages - they are closely connected with a coffeehouse which is described in detail in a set of English documentation available to all - the stories either take place or are told in the Cafe The proposed Cafe Newsletter would widen the scope of material eligible for publication and make it easier for the beginning Lojban writers to produce something worthwhile. History The project has gone through several stages during the last two months. There were some preliminary postings concerning the lack of Lojban text -- especially original text, not translations from other languages. It was also noted that actually very few people did produce Lojban text or use Lojban in communicating with other Lojbanists. The ideas culminating in the project were formulated during the summer LogFests and the ensuing discussions on the net. _The Lojban Canterbury Tales_ The first LogFest formulated the idea of encouraging people to write original Lojban stories with some common features. The basic idea was that there would be a place were people would gather to tell stories to each other like in the original Canterbury Tales or in The Decameron. The Finnish national epic Kalevala was also mentioned as a possible source of ideas and there were some off-line discussions concerning the possibilities. The parts of these conversations which affected the development of the Project are included in the Papers. The discussions were at a very general level and nothing concrete was done at this stage. The name 'Kalevala' was used in the headers of most of the postings which gave rise to the first name of the project proper. _The Lojban Kalevala Project_ ==> _The Ckafybarja Project_ At the second LogFest the Cafe idea was adopted and also the idea of having a detailed description of the locale and the personnel. This description would be in English in order to be readily accessible to everybody. It would serve two main purposes: 1) the stories by various writers would obviously describe the same Cafe 2) the less creative writers would be able to concentrate on the plot instead of also having to invent the settings Three different settings were described but the description #2 was the favourite already before the plan was posted and there was actually no further discussion on the net. There were differences of opinion concerning various aspects of the description. Most of these have been resolved but some are in limbo and some are waiting comment from the non-netters. The 'Kalevala' was quite soon dropped from the name of the project as there was no actual reason for the reference. I proposed the name 'la jbotur' instead but it was never adopted by anybody else. The name of the Cafe has been 'la jbolaz' for a while but this has turned out to be ungrammatical. Controversies When the Cafe Project proposal (The Lojban Kalevala Project) was posted on the net there was some disagreement concerning various aspects of the plan. The main reason for this was the fact that none of the most active netters had participated in the initial formulation. Some of the ideas presented on the net contradicted the original plan so some non-netters felt that the very active netters were trying to dominate. The views of the netters (or of the most vocal of them) were presented to the non-netters but there has been no response yet. The conversation on the net has quieted down. The most controversial question was the characterization of the Cafe personnel -- especially the proposed national heterogeneity. The main views presented are included in the Condensed Papers and I am not going to reiterate them here. As far as I can see this question is still open -- in all the others at least some kind of a consensus was achieved. Basic Settings A more detailed description of the settings is included in the Condensed Papers. The Cafe A small cafe in rural surroundings (not visible from the inside). Predominantly Lojbanic clientele gathers there to tell stories. Some netters have already arrived. Nick advises to avoid interaction for the time being (c.f. Cond. Pap.) The Personnel Multinational personnel, Chinese manager and 5 others representing the source languages of Lojban. Detailed characterization isn't available yet so avoid adding details in the stories. All the views presented on the net concerning the characterization ought to be studied most carefully by all potential writers. We need well thought out characterizations which take into account the views presented by Ivan and others concerning the difficulty of realistically portraying national characteristics and the need to have recognizably non-American characters as desired by lojbab and some non-netters. Mark pointed out that the characters must be such that also the later writers can live with them. They are basically background characters but many writers may want to use them in their stories. Others may choose to ignore them in which case the characterizations don't really matter very much. Accumulated Material English Descriptions There isn't very much new descriptive material as the project hasn't actually started yet -- in spite of the posting of the first preparatory Lojban texts. Nick Nicholas has added detail to the original Description #2 of the locale and David Bowen has described a Cafe manager. These descriptions are contained in the Condensed Papers. Lojban Text Altogether 5 Lojban stories have been posted -- a proper story by Mark Shoulson, a longish 'rant' by Nick Nicholas, 2 short 'etudes' by Veijo Vilva and a short story by Iain Alexander. Only the story by Mark contains storytelling along the lines indicated in the plan, the others are more preparatory. These stories have resulted in a very active conversation on the net concerning various linguistic aspects -- both grammatical and semantico-pragmatical. One very challenging task for the future is the collection, editing and publication of the accumulating theoretical material so that the results of these conversations can be utilized by the whole Lojban community. The Newsletter Proposal Nick Nicholas posted a proposal concerning a Cafe Newsletter which would publish all kinds of Lojban text connected with the Cafe. The proposal is included in the Condensed Papers. Widening the Scope The newsletter would actually widen the scope of the Lojban texts compared to the original plan. The original plan called for stories about the Cafe or stories told at the Cafe -- the Newsletter would accept all kinds of original Lojban text connected with the Cafe, e.g. small studies like my 'etudes' would be eligible for publication. This would be the first purely Lojban journal -- all the theoretical material with English explanations and glosses would be published in the JL as would selected Lojban writings not connected with the Cafe. The main purpose of the Newsletter would be to encourage and help beginning writers. The second raison d'etre would be to show that we have advanced so far that Lojban can be used without English glosses. Perhaps the most advanced stories wouldn't be accessible to everybody but there would probably be a much greater number of easy and intermediate articles. I also think that having the stories without English glosses would be advantageous as the structure of Lojban -- especially 'Lojbanic' Lojban -- is so different that providing an English version may actually hinder understanding or at least slow down the learning. __To would-be writers__ 1. start writing NOW 2. don't set goals that are too ambitious. Remember that the published stories DO NOT set a standard which you ought to match. Your first stories can be very short and use simple sentences. Here is my first attempt: le la vei,on ckafybarja srinuntroci xipa xici ni'o sriku'a .i ckafybarja .i mi zvati le vorstu gi'e terpanci loi ckafi da.uicai .i mi ca ze'upunai.oi sumne da .i mi dzukla le jbustu gi'e ctacarna .i rancindu jubme .i seldandu lo vrici to'erninda'i noi mi na djuno zo'e ke'a .i selzvati ji'ipano zutse remna .i srotanxe loi ckafi lei mudri .i vrici .i mi visyfacki fi pa lo poi loi remna na zutlamji ke'a ku'o jubme goi ko'a .i mi co'a zutlamji ko'a .i ko'a lamji le nunjupca'u .i le jukpa cu selviska gi'e jupfinti de.a'ucu'i .i mi pensi.a'e loi selpinxe co ckafi.au .i ckafypanci fi mi.ui .i ckafypanci .i .ui.o'u .i sriku'a 3. start with simple things, do experiments with the language. Try to avoid formulating the ideas in English -- otherwise you may have difficulties with astonishingly simple expressions. 4. You may find to your surprise that it is often actually easier to express something in Lojban because you don't have to cope with the relatively free structure of English. Just drop the words to the proper slots and the unambiguous grammar of Lojban takes care of the rest. 5. don't force yourself to invent a story -- it doesn't work. The story either comes or not. Pick up something and start writing about it -- but do it now. 6. the story isn't very important at this stage. It may be quite banal or even non-existent -- if you find a Lojbanic way of expressing something, write it down. 7. there is no stylistic tradition, you are completely free -- within the dictates of the grammar, of course. If you end up expressing your thoughts in a way which doesn't resemble anything you ever read, it's quite alright. 8. don't be afraid of simple sentences. Lojban IS different. Writing a complex sentence which doesn't fall apart doesn't prove you know Lojban well -- it is just a trivial exercise. Don't write a sentence which you can't readily understand yourself -- even next week. You ought to be able to understand your sentences without parsing/analyzing/ translating -- at least the structure even if you don't remember all the words you had to pick from the word lists. 9. it doesn't matter if you can't find a natural English way of expressing the idea of a sentence. Lojban IS different. A tanru, a lujvo, a sumti with attachments, a {ko} at a unaccustomed position may all be very difficult to express naturally in English. Just accept it. Utilize it. 10. start writing