Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!webber From: webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Was: Global Cultural Prototype [Loglan] Keywords: Loglan Message-ID: Date: 13 Oct 89 11:00:52 GMT References: <291@aztec.osbusouth.xerox.COM> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 37 In article <291@aztec.osbusouth.xerox.COM>, hamilton@aztec.osbusouth.xerox.COM (Bruce Hamilton) writes: > As far as I know, Loglan is the only widely known (among > scholars) language which has attempted to start from > ground zero and build an easy-to-learn, unambiguous > language. As has been pointed out, Esperanto (and > Interlingua) are highly Indo-European/ Latinate. Actually I have been reading Ogden's The System of Basic English (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1934) recently and one of the main points it makes is: No other existing language can be simplified to anything like the same extent. The chief difficulties of normal English are eliminated in Basic. One result of this analysis and simplification of normal English is that Basic is very similar in character to Chinese -- which gives it a special claim as a medium of communication with and in the East. > See your library for more info on Loglan (short for > "logical language"). (And it may pop up on sci.lang once > in a while.) As far as I know, the only thing a person can reasonably expect to find in a library on loglan would be the June 1960 Scientific American article on it. There is a substantial privately published literature on loglan, but libraries tend not to get books/magazines that aren't carried by major publishers. To the best of my knowledge, there are now two separate organizations for loglanists: The Loglan Institute, Inc (1701 Northeast 75th Street, Gainesville Florida 32061) and The Logical Language Group (President and Editor Bob LeChevalier, 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031). The Loglan Institute was the original group and still publishes language overviews and dictionaries as well as carrying software to help learners (both IBM-PC and Macintosh versions). The 4th edition of Loglan 1: A Logical Language should now be out (599 pages, ISBN 1-877665-0-2, $21.50) [by way of comparison, the 1975 3rd edition was 300 pages]. Both organizations have regular newsletters, etc. --- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)