Lojban timeline

From Lojban
Revision as of 06:08, 12 July 2014 by Mukti (talk | contribs) (→‎1975-1976: Move 1975 events under subheading)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Loglan (1954-1987)

1954

  • Loglan development started by James Cooke Brown (JCB). James Cooke Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Florida, Gainesville, decides to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Brown, a social psychologist with a degree from U/Minnesota, was well trained by second generation Logical Positivists (e.g. May Brodbeck) and so thought to use something like a logically perfect language, that is the First Order Predicate Logic, for the test.

1955-1960

  • The details of the progression here are hazy, but during this period most of the basic guidelines of the language were developed as well as some of the details: the shape of predicates, names, and little words, little word vocabulary and some predicate vocabulary.
  • Speech stream uniquely segmented into words, word stream uniquely parsed into sentences (from the language of logic).
  • Metaphysically neutral (for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis).
  • Grammatically simple, for easy learning (practical).
  • Vocabulary derived from major languages for easy learning (practical)
  • The technique for deriving predicates was also at least outlined and some predicates derived by hand.
  • Sometime in this period, Brown invented the game of Careers, which was marketed by Milton Bradley Co. and eventually provided Brown with a decent living, independent of the usual academic jobs.

1960-1962

  • Brown had an NSF Grant to cover the computer time to develop the primitive predicates according to his algorithm (with some handwork at the end). This resulted in the first edition of Loglan 4 and 5, the dictionaries between Loglan and English, work done with his wife Lujoye Fuller Brown.
  • There was apparently a group of people around Brown who worked on the language: learning it, using it, discussing it and revisions. It is not clear who all was involved, though some names have turned up in various contexts. For them, at some time, was written the first draft of Loglan 1, the general description of the language. Also during this time or shortly thereafter a longer version of L1, the only finished versions of L2, the explanation of the language, and L3 a (very restricted) primer were written and “published” by University Microfilms.

1960

  • June - the famous Scientific American article by James Cooke Brown
  • There was a flurry of responses to this article from a range of people: linguists, philosophers, logicians, artificial language buffs. The mail was largely unanswered, though a few letters, e.g. from Quine, were saved for later use. A later examination of those letters shows that many people who later played some role in Loglan were already inquiring about it (John Clifford sent from RAND Corp. asking about the use of Loglan as an intermediate language in machine translation, for example).

1961

  • JCB gets small grant for developing Loglan materials from NIMH, which then funded linguistics research.

1962-1975

  • A dark period. Brown’s (second?) marriage ended in divorce and he fled with his infant daughter (?) to Europe, first England and eventually Ibiza. Apparently various people managed to track him down in these places and discuss Loglan with him. He worked on it some, eventually producing the (third edition of) L1 and getting it published just prior to his return to the US.
  • In the US before his return (exact date unclear) some friends of Brown set up an organization, The Loglan Institute, to deal with Loglan related matters. This was not a non-profit organization and was, in fact, a DBA for Brown, though his friends were listed as officers of the organization. (I am unsure whether the organization was even incorporated at that time.)
  • Sometime in here JCB wrote The Troika Incident, which Lyman Sargeant called the best utopian novel of the period. In it Loglan is talked about under the name Panlan, but the samples, e.g. ai mi betgo, are recognizable as the Loglan of the period. The novel also contains a description of another of JCB’s projects, the Jobs Market (seen by some as a practical application of Careers), on which he worked for many years.

1964

  • Loglan is mentioned by name in Robert Heinlein’s "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" but there are no samples, indeed no evidence that Heinlein knew anything about it other than the name.

1968

  • Loglan books published in microfilm; Loglan 1: language description; Loglan 2: technical justification of design; Loglan 3 partial programmed primer; Loglan 4/5 bi directional English/Loglan dictionary. Linguist Arnold Zwicky reviewed Loglan 1 in a linguistics journal.

1974

  • Revised edition of Loglan 4/5 published as hardbound and paperbound dictionary; advertised in Scientific American.

1975-1976

  • Brown eventually came to the US to take over, settling eventually in San Diego. There he began teaching the language to several interested people: Bob Jenner from York, ME, first of all, John Parks-Clifford (his pseudonym - pc)at the end of 1976, and other soon thereafter, forming a group in San Diego.
  • The first issue of The Loglanist (la loglentan) bore the nominal date of 1976 (when the editing was mostly done) but actually appeared early the next year.
  • The first issue was largely pc and Brown though there were already some reader- supplied pieces, with responses from JCB and pc.

1975

  • Revised edition of Loglan 1 published in hardbound and paperbound.
  • Loglan 1 was announced with fanfare in an ad in the August 1975 Scientific American. A couple hundred orders for the book were submitted, but the addresses given for the orders was not quite correct and so there was some delay in shipping. The address for contacting Brown on the back of the book was also incorrect and so the considerable body of mail that resulted was delayed and largely went unanswered.
  • In the fall of 1975, Brown visited John Parks-Clifford in St. Louis (a letter had gotten through to him and he had replied, with a dialog ensuing). In the course of the visit or soon thereafter, John was asked to edit a journal of Loglan and accepted.

1976-1980

  • In The Loglanist there was a considerable amount of discussion of a sort (and indeed on topics) that are familiar from the Lojban List and wiki of the present. In some cases these convinced JCB to make changes in the language, mainly adding new words or, in one case, a new letter, h, and then reconstruct a few words as a result. There were also a number of translations of short passages. The changes were summed up in a special issue of The Loglanist in the fall of 1980.
  • During this period interested people met in informal get-togethers, Logfests, at various places in New England, usually in July (pc was in Maine for estivation, Jenner and several other participants lived in ME, MA or close enough). Some proposals, both about the language and about the Institute arose from these meetings.
  • Along with the discussion of the issues there developed of course people who held different opinions about how things should be done from those that were the official choice. For the most part this was confined to constantly raising the issues, though at least one regular discussant also set up his own alternate language (not directly in competition with Loglan, however) and another was (more or less jokingly) accused of setting up a competitor that did everything backwards of Loglan, so Nalgol.
  • Three larger issues had come in for discussion and had moved JCB into action during this period: unambiguous grammar, creating compound words, and the organization of The Institute. The grammar had always been said to be unambiguous, but that claimed had never been proven and the first few attempts to prove it showed it not to be true as matters stood. This was partly due to the fact that the grammar given was not well formalized beyond the pieces that were directly borrowed from the (demonstrably unambiguous) grammar of the language of logic. JCB, guided by Jeff Prothero and others, set about to write a formal grammar. The target was to get a parser by using YACC, since that would guarantee the language was LALR1 and so (from other considerations) unambiguous. This project continued for several years, with various successes being announced along the way but each failing to be a complete grammar.
  • The issue of compound predicates, built up from the primitive predicates of the language became pressing as more text was developed and new words were needed. Loglan 1 had left the method of forming such words up in the air and, as a result, several techniques had been used, mainly just ramming (what were taken to be significant or easily identifiable) parts of two (or more) primitives together in a way that seemed likely to be recognizable. So, in the example above, betgo for an English speaker in the context of use pretty clearly means, “go to bed” and is derived from betpu, “bed,” and gotso, “go.” Other cases – particularly those by speakers of languages other than English – were less clear to the usual audience. And some cases were just perverse: the Jenny method, for example. And people were also coining words from non-Loglan sources but also fitting as closely as possible into the CVCCV and CCVCV formats. JCB became convinced that this could not continue and so reworked the whole morphology of the predicates, giving many of them special reduced forms to be used in constructing compounds and insisting that all compounds be made using these forms where possible and full forms where not. This project took a while, being announced finally in 1983.
  • JCB wanted to make the Institute tax-exempt and most of the participants in the Loglanist wanted it to be a membership organization. In 1979, then, the Institute was reorganized as a membership organization and tax-exempt status as a research organization was applied for. The first election by the members of the board of the organization was held in 1980. Once the Institute became a membership organization, the board urged JCB to copyright (or whatever turned out to be the appropriate protection) the material: name, lists, examples and so on. He refused to do so at the time (though he did eventually do a part of it).

1976

1977

  • first NSF proposal rejected
  • first partial machine grammar of Loglan using YACC by Doug Landauer
  • first extended Loglan "conversation" (mostly pauses while people looked up words)

1979

  • Nora Tansky (now Nora LeChevalier) becomes first "member" of TLI. By 1981, there were several members and TLI became nominally a "member-controlled corporation". Lognet started in 1981 as a communications vehicle for the membership.
  • Great Morphological Revolution work starts. Completed in 1982

1980-1984

  • The Loglanist was slow to appear usually and so a new publication was started to carry intermediate news, including social events, personal information, and business of the Institute that needed membership input. It soon came to also include some discussion of issues.
  • In 1980 there was the first general election for officers of the Institute, JCB still as President but the rest of the board being drawn from the members. In 1982, for the second election, JCB stepped down as President but took the office, Chairman of the Board – ultimate control but freedom from day-to-day matters; pc was President.
  • The third election was 1984. For whatever reasons (apparent loss of control?) JCB decided to return to a Board of cronies, but was late in getting his slate out and did not inform the rest of the board that he was preparing one. The board cobbled together a slate drawn entirely from members and presented it simultaneously with JCB presenting his slate. JCB persuaded the membership slate to withdraw and declared that the slate had been presented too late under the bylaws. His slate was elected. He then attacked the people who had put together the other slate in a variety of ways (though never actually accusing them of betrayal). They quit the organization.

1980

  • gathering of New England Loglanists with JCB visiting - this was the first Logfest

1982

  • First "complete" machine grammar of Loglan completed by Scott Layson after significant contributions from Jeff Prothero

1983

  • Dissent within the TLI membership over GMR and other technical issues causes JCB to reassert full control of TLI
  • Jim Carter publishes several variant Loglan materials independently of TLI; this work is labeled Nalgol by pc because "it got everything in Loglan backwards". Debates over Carter's work turn JCB's reassertion of control into a major political fight. Most active Loglanists beome inactive over the next year, and The Loglanist ceases publication.

1984-2002

  • JCB turned to completing the Great Morphological Revolution – already pretty much done – of getting all primitives equipped with affixes to build compound word and of fixing the form for such compounds as well as some rules about borrowings. He also sought legal protection for all of the elements of the language: the YACC grammar, the whole vocabulary and many of the other programs, which were used (not Logflash, a computerized version of his flashcard routine, which had been created by Nora Tansky and never given to the Institute).
  • Sometime around 1986, Robert LeChevalier came to aid JCB with computer related projects, tidying up the YACC grammar and computerizing the very haphazard membership and book-order files of the Institute. When LeChevalier moved to the Washington DC area, he took some of the membership data with him to continue trying to bring some order out of it. In Washington LeChevalier started a local Loglan group, which produced some discussion, and eventually a newsletter, which was sent to all the Loglanists in LeChevalier’s database (The Loglanist was still being published with a new editor and joined with the old Institute newsletter to offer a more regular – though less meaty – periodical). Though the members of the Washington group were for the most part also member of the Institute, JCB took the position that the group was unauthorized and was trespassing on Institute business (though the Institute had no other local groups, even in San Diego). He further held that mere membership in the Institute did not entitle a person to make use Loglan material – all under copyright – and so even citing Loglan words was forbidden as were definitely writing Loglan sentences or citing bits of the grammar.
  • In response to this as well as the accumulated suggested additions and “corrections” to the Institute’s language, the Washington group – with some remote adherents – decided to create a new version of Loglan from scratch. The outlines were thrashed out in a series of Logfests at LeChevalier’s house in Fairfax VA; the details – the derivation of new primitives from a revised list of the most widely used languages, the reorganization of the phonology and morphology, the revision of the grammar were done by LeChevalier and John Cowan with a variety of helpers in one area and another. The result was launched in 1987 as “Lojban, a realization of Loglan.” JCB fairly quickly filed a copyright infringement suit, which went on for several years, finally resulting in the withdrawal of copyright from “Loglan.” Meanwhile, although the newsletters from the groups eventually ceased, discussions continued with ever-increasing ease on the Internet. Finally, the creation process culminated in the publication of The Complete Lojban Language (CLL) by John Cowan in 1997. By this time, the group had been formalized as a tax-exempt educational and research organization, the Logical Language Group, and the Logfest had become the annual meeting of the Group, regularly electing LeChevalier (now “lojbab”) as President and the active people present as the Board.
  • Of course, publication of an official guide to the language did not stop discussion of what the language should be, starting with disputes about what the official text actually meant and then what it should have meant – or said. However, the guide did open the way for a number of large-scale translations: xorxes did Alice and The Little Prince and a number of other works, including game scripts were made. There was also a serious and growing amount of spontaneous communication in Lojban over IRC, generating another large corpus of usage. In 2002, the accumulated discussion including especially the practical problems that turned up in translation and chat work, led to the formation of BPFK (baupla fuzykamni – the committee responsible for a language plan) to amend CLL to remove unclarities or uncertainties, to fill gaps and, if need be, to alter bits to deal better with perceived problems. This committee is meant to be almost the last step in fixing the language, setting up a baseline (which CLL and word lists had already largely done) so that users would not have to worry about the language changing (as Loglan has done without stop since its inception) out from under them. This work has proceeded with increasing speed – though occasional snags – since, under the overall leadership of Robin Lee Powell, who was also elected President of the Group at the 2002 meeting and has provided a number of Internet services, fore mostly the wiki, for the Group over the years.

1986

  • July - me la uacintyn loglytuan (the future ju'i lobypli) #1 published as an attempt to create a Washington DC area Loglan Users group and reactivate the membership.
  • September - Bob LeChevalier restarts the annual gathering of Loglanists at Logfest. Joel Shprentz creates a Loglan area on a BBS, with downloadable Logflash and Loglan wordlists. JCB perceives lojbab's efforts as an attempt to take over TLI, threatening legal action when lojbab refuses JCB's authority and TLI claims of ownership of his and Nora's work.

Lojban (1987-present)

1987-1997

Lojban is forked from Loglan. The Logical Language Group (LLG) is formed. The mailing list is founded. Loglan's trademark is canceled. The Great Rafsi Reallocation. The Glasgow Conversation.

1987

  • April - me la uacintyn loglytuan became "hoi loglypli" with the publication of issue #3.
  • May - on Memorial Day weekend, Lojban (then called Loglan-88) is started by Bob LeChevalier, Nora LeChevalier (still Tansky at that point), Gary Burgess, and Tommy Whitlock. At this point, it is intended merely as an alternative gismu list and phonology to evade copyright claims by JCB.
  • July - The Logical Language Group founded
  • October - lojbab and Nora married in ceremony with vows in primitive Lojban
  • December - initial gismu list completed

1988

  • January - Lojban publicly announced as Loglan-88 at Evecon science fiction convention
  • February - "hoi loglypli" became ju'i lobypli with the publication of issue #4.
  • February - JCB registers trademark for Loglan, threatens to sue lojbab and Nora. The Logical Language Group sues for cancellation of the trademark a year later after negotiations have failed.
  • May - The Logical Language Group incorporated as a non-profit organization.
  • June - work on Lojban machine grammar starts
  • June - "Lojban - A Realization of Loglan" adopted as the name of the language
  • October - earliest complete cmavo list and machine grammar; Grammar Synopsis written for review intending eventual publication. After severe criticism, shelved in favor of a textbook and dictionary as higher priorities. The Complete Lojban Language by John Cowan (1997) was the completion of the Grammar Synopsis.

1989

  • January - first Lojban class starts, taught by Bob LeChevalier; draft textbook being written as part of teaching the class, but aborted when the class discovered posed unanswered questions about negation, leading to the "negation paper" which is now a chapter in The Complete Lojban Language.
  • TLI publishes 4th edition of Loglan 1.
  • August - first extended Lojban conversation by members of the first class.
  • Lojban List started by Eric Raymond
  • November 17 - Article in Washington Post, "An Artificial Language Seeks Status as the Lingua Franca" published; reproduced in JL11 (3/90).
  • "The Open Window" by Saki appears, translated by Athelstan, in JL10 (Nov/Dec 1989), as well as two articles on Lojban poetry.

1990

  • August. Grammar baselined. Machine grammar published in JL13.

1991

  • (March; JL14) Loglan trademark cancelled and the cancellation is upheld by the US Court of Appeals.
  • Beginning of the 'Tweeners generation of Lojbanists, and of substantial growth of community online.
  • ziryroi published in July.

1992

  • Athelstan injured in February.
  • First baselining of the gismu list. JL16 (June/92) announces place structure changes.
  • lojbab promotes Lojban in Russia while visiting Moscow. First international promotion of the language.
  • ckafybarja project initiated.

1993

  • May - ju'i lobypli #18 published (le terpra cu denpa da poi balvi)
  • June 1 - The Great Rafsi Reallocation goes into effect.
  • December? - Veijo Vilva starts semi-official Lojban web archive, which eventually became www.lojban.org

1994

  • First baselining of the machine grammar.

1995

1997-2003

"The Complete Lojban Language" (CLL) is published. JCB passes away. The Lojban wiki is started. The LLG Baseline Policy is proposed and ratified. Lojban IRC is logged by the vreji bot.

1997

  • July - language baselined for publication - baseline to last until 5 years after grammar and dictionary and textbook have all been published.
  • November 28 - Publication of The Complete Lojban Language by John Cowan announced.

1999

2000

  • Lojban attracts Attention - Lojban was mentioned as a discussion item on Slashdot in April. The result was an enormous volume of hits on our website, more traffic than we have seen in two years in just one day, about 1 gigabyte of bandwidth. But our web host CAIS Internet (www.cais.net) stayed up and presumably a lot more people now know about Lojban. After the first week, traffic died down somewhat, but still seems to be running at about double the traditional levels. To check out the Slashdot discussion see: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/04/25/1317255.shtml To look at Lojban web site statistics, see: http://www.lojban.org/stats
  • LogFest 2000: The annual meeting celebrating Lojban will be held at lojbab's house (2904 Beau Lane Fairfax VA 22031 USA) on the weekend of 5-6 August 2000. The annual meeting of The Logical Language Group, Inc. will be held at 10:30AM EDT at lojbab's house during LogFest. All Lojbanists and prospective Lojbanists at all levels of skill are invited; contact Lojbab for more details.
  • February 13 - James Cooke Brown died. Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan and founder of the Loglan Project, died in February while on a cruise around South America. He was 78. On behalf of LLG, Bob LeChevalier has expressed our personal and official sorrow at his passing. While Lojban and LLG were founded as a result of substantive disagreement with JCB over several issues, he was a creative genius who will be greatly missed. There have been some soundings taken as to the possibility of rapprochement between the TLI Loglan and LLG communities. Both communities seem strongly in favor of the idea, though it is uncertain what types of moves could be made. Discussions will continue over a longer period of time.
  • May 9 - first Russian Lojban web page created by Evgenii Sklyanin

2001

  • "tremendous apparent growth" - Many Lojbanists create web pages
  • June 13(?) - the first lojban wiki based on tiki engine started by jez
  • alt.language.artificial.lojban (?) created.
  • Lojban beginners list created

2002

  • 4 January 2002 - jezrax started this timeline, little realizing what it would become....
  • 20 January 2002 - Bob LeChevalier fills in the gaps; feel free to ask for more dates if something seems missing
  • 18 April 2002 - Amazing news! The first draft of the Alice In Wonderland translation appears to be complete. The only things missing are a couple of the chapter titles and one stanza of a poem, as of this writing. Please go take a look in the Translations section!
  • 2 May 2002 - Minor website updates have been made. In particular, the contents of the Learning Lojban sections have been slightly improved, and many relative links have been fixed.
  • 1 July 2002 - There was a major (several day) downtime of this site, due to bad RAM, which in turn caused file system corruption. The problem has been solved, and this machine now has a new, larger hard drive, as well as a completely new operating system (NetBSD 1.5.2). In addition, since the last update this machine has gotten a much faster processor and been moved into a co-location facility with a connection to the internet that is close to 300Mb/s.
  • 23 July 2002 - LogFest, the annual gathering of lojbanists, is this coming weekend. Also, the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Members of the LLG will be held on Sunday, July 28th (during LogFest). The 2002 Annual Meeting of the Members of the LLG will be held at 1030AM EDT on Sunday July 28, 2002 at lojbab's house, 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031 USA. There being insufficient notice as required, no bylaw changes can be considered. LogFest mostly consists of a bunch of people hanging out at lojbab's house, talking in and about lojban. The annual meeting always occurs during LogFest.
  • 9 August 2002 - As may be obvious, I just made some drastic changes to the layout of the site. Please let me (webmaster@lojban.org) know what you think!
  • 18 September 2002 - The old minutes of the LLG have been posted, thanks to Jay Kominek. He also html formatted the bylaws. See the LLG publications page. The Official LLG Projects page has been constructed. Please submit anything you are working on! An Official LLG Committees page has also been added. An interactive story has been added; see the original lojbanic texts page.
  • 23 September 2002 - There has been a major revamp of the Resources section. It has a lot more information in it now.
  • 21 October 2002 - The Lojban FAQ has been updated and moved and revamped and such. .uisai Thanks go to Dalton Graham for doing most of the work.
  • 24 October 2002 - A Promotional Materials page has been created. Also, I've made a Community Files Area, which is a TWiki (a web-based colloborative space).
  • 14 November 2002 - Addition to the Official Projects Page, minor fixes and updates.
  • 28 November 2002 - The new Official Baseline Statement, from the LLG has been posted, thus lifting the language freeze. BPFK instituted to sort out contradictions and clarify underdefined issues in the Lojban baseline
  • 30 December 2002 - An IRC logging system has been set up. See The Lojbanic Forums page. Also, many pages have been edited to point to wiki.lojban.org as the official wiki site, which will continue to be the right place even if someone else takes it over.

2003-2007

BPFK begins work. The Camxes parser is implemented. BPFK adopts xorlo. XKCD name checks Lojban.

2003

  • This is the year when Robin Lee Powell started creating camxes, a new parser for Lojban which will eventually become a new standard for Lojban having higher priority than CLL published earlier.
  • 29 March 2003 - BPFK opened for business
  • 7 April 2003 - This is the first site update in a long time, and as such it's a big one. The site now has Request Tracker set up, and that is being used to manage necessary changes. The Level 0 book was added to the main site, a Helping Lojban page, a Help page, and a Feedback page were all added, and jbovlaste and Request Tracker were both linked in.
  • 11 May 2003 - Some bylaw changes from 1992 were incorporated. Split off of Old Projects into a seperate page, many changes (mostly minor) to the projects and committees pages. Markup changes all over the place. The full changes list can be found at the Aegis change page for change number 144.
  • 10 September 2003 - What is Lojban? is now available for purchase! The lojban.org site is now available, at least partially, in a variety of different languages. The vast majority of the site has been marked up in a way to make easy translation possible, but not all of the actual translation has been done. If you want to help, please contact the webmaster. Also, there is now a web-based IRC client available on the Forums page. The French and Spanish Lojban lists are now available. A Lojbanic translation program has been installed.

2004

  • 2 May 2004 - A variety of minor bug fixes were done on the site, as well as some more major items. The front page was returned to CSS, XHTML and Bobby Level 3 compliance. The problem with clicking on one of the maps causing the maps to stop functioning was fixed. A couple of one-sheet brochures were added to the brochures page. The 25 November 2002 Board Meeting minutes were added. The 2003 annual meeting minutes were added.
  • Robin Lee Powell takes over as head of the BPFK
  • Large influx of new users on the #lojban IRC channel
  • 17 Dec 2004 xorxes started working on implementing morphology for camxes.
  • 25 Dec 2004 Announcement that the gadri proposal (better known as "xorlo") was passed by BPFK

2005

  • 5 Sep 2005 - Complete site overhaul! Most of the lojban.org content has been moved from a set of static HTML pages to a TikiWiki content management system. The number of changes caused by this are too long to list. In addition, the LLG 2004 Annual Meeting Minutes have been posted.
  • 13 Nov 2005 - As the Secretary, I apologize for the lateness of this announcement, but I only got full confirmation 10 days ago myself. Philcon - The Philadelphia Conference of Science Fiction and Fantasy has agreed to have a room set aside for LogFest 2005! Philcon 2005 is being held at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown on December 9th-11th, 2005. That's IN 26 DAYS! I know that's really, really short notice, but if we can get enough people to show up, they'll do it for us next year too, and hopefully that relationship will continue far into the future. People showing up for LogFest will have to buy PhilCon memberships. Please let me know if that, or any other aspect of these arrangements, provides an unacceptable financial burden to you. I, and others, are willing to help put up some money for active Lojbanists who want to come. We don't know how big the room is going to be yet, but I've told them we expect about 10 people.

2006

  • 4 Jan 2006 - Logfest was held at PhilCon in Philadelphia from December 9th to December 11th. It was a quite successful event, despite a turnout that was a bit lower than expected. More details in the page about Logfest 2005.
  • 24 Mar 2006 - jbonunsla 2006, a celebration of the Logical Language, will be held at the science fiction convention and open source software expo Penguicon in Michigan, April 21-23 2006. This does not exclude others hosting LogFests of their own in 2006.
  • 4 May 2006 - jbonunsla 2006 was held at Penguicon in Michigan, April 21-23 2006. Next up for jbonunsla 2006 will be Philcon 2006 in November!
  • 20 July 2006 - Have you visited the land where Lojban is spoken? It's called samxarmuj, meaning "computerized imaginary universe". It's a text-based world on the internet, where you can operate a character using commands in either English or Lojban: the online software is bilingual. Lojban is like the language of magic in samxarmuj--speaking it can bring objects into existence and give them form and function. You don't even need a plane ticket. Just click here and use the password "moo" to log in as a guest until you have your own account. Commands are typed in the bottom-most part of the window. Guest accounts are limited to using English, so type the "register" command to get your own account. It's totally free. More information, including other ways to access samxarmuj, is available at the wiki page about The Lojban MOO. Intense labor on the part of many skilled programmers in our community has brought forth one of the most exciting venues in which to use Lojban that this language has ever had. Today, the software leaves Beta. It is with bated breath that we launch this massively multiplayer system and declare it ready for the public. But now we need to massively populate it. We are currently summoning new mages of every skill level. Come build your own part of the land. Although you do not have to speak Lojban to adventure in the land as it forms out of the nothingness around us, all spells must be cast in correct Lojban. Whatever power hears our descriptions of samxarmuj, and turns them into reality, will respond to no other language. This land also welcome tourists with no skill in Lojban at all. Feel free to ask us any question about how to use the system. With enough interest, we may even be able to establish the Lojbanic equivalent of a Hogwarts academy for novice Lojban magicians! Who knows? Welcome to samxarmuj! Go native!
  • 28 August 2006 - The next Lojban Fest for 2006 will be held at Philcon in Philadelphia, November 17 through 19, 2006. Check out the page jbonunsla 2006 for the schedule and attendees so far, as well as registration details. Newcomers are especially welcome to join us! Keep checking the schedule as we continue to work with the Klingon Language Institute about the possibility of collaborative content between Lojban and Klingon at Philcon!
  • 12 September 2006 - Lojban was mentioned in in an article in the Wall Street Journal, "How Hartmut Pilch, Avid Computer Geek, Bested Microsoft", by Mary Jacoby. The free sample text made available online reads as follows: "BRUSSELS -- A proposal here to create a new European patents court has the support of Microsoft Corp., Siemens AG and many other giants of Western industry. But can it survive an attack from Hartmut Pilch? A 43-year-old linguist from Munich, Mr. Pilch speaks Chinese, Japanese and an artificial language called Lojban intended to eliminate ambiguity and promoted by some programmers. He is the unlikely leader of a movement of self-styled computer geeks out to sink a patents plan they say would stifle software programmers. "Patents on software mean any programmer can be sued at any time," says Mr. Pilch, ...
  • 03 October 2006 - The Lojban community blog on Livejournal is now embedded on The Lojban homepage, as part of the plan discussed in Friday's entry. Prepare for a digest of all the Lojbanic goodness the web has to offer! You don't have to have a Livejournal account to subscribe to the web feed. You do need an LJ account to post, but if you don't want to get an LJ account you can just send your contribution to Matt Arnold who will post it to the blog for you.
  • 20 October 2006 - Only one week left to get in on the Lojban group's discount rate to register for Philcon in Philadelphia, the science fiction convention where the annual Lojban Festival will be held on November 17 through 19. See jbonunsla 2006 for details, including our stellar Lojbanic guest list and schedule of events. We now have two rooms to put you up in if your expenses are tight. You can still register after we send in the group registration, but it will cost more. It might be the most fun Lojbanic meeting ever. I'm serious, now is the time to get in on this! -Eppcott
  • 27 October 2006 - Today I'm going to send in the Lojban group registration for Philcon. Email me your name and address and PayPal your registration now. I mean right now!
  • 30 November 2006/1 December 2006 - XKCD mentions Lojban in the comic that is doomed to become famous!
  • So welcome, xkcd readers! Join some Lojbanic Forums. The Lojban-speaking community loves xkcd, so getting xkcd'ed is as good as getting Slashdotted, Dugg or Farked. The author of xkcd is expressing a sentiment similar to Groucho Marx's statement, "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." :) We can definitely laugh at ourselves, and exposure to xkcd's target audience (math, linguistics, and sarcasm) will probably result in at least one more participant in our hobby.

2007-present

LLG passes zasni gafyfantymanri (ZG, "temporary baseline") policy. "In the Land of Invented Languages" published. Original artistic productions in Lojban by guskant and selpa'i. New Lojban tech.

2007

  • 14 May 2007 - Today, Timo and Cizra released their animation short lai citno melbi pinpedi. You can catch it on Google Video now! If that title sounds familiar, you may have seen this comic strip before. In other news, the same Timo has been busy creating Jbobac, a Lojbanic audio board that anyone can post to. Just point your browser to [1], and join the action!
  • 10 Nov 2007 - Annual meeting. xorlo, a new rule in Lojban that clarifies the use of some articles xorlo was given official status.
  • Robin Lee Powell tells about the acceptance of xorlo in the mailing list

2009

  • 1 Aug 2009 - jbotcan, the lojbanic channel, is back up. It features anonymous imageboards, an rss feed that collects news from all over and more goodies! Be sure to check it out!
  • 19 May 2009 - "In the Land of Invented Languages", a book by Arika Okrent, details Lojban and its history
  • 30 Nov 2009 - The Complete Lojban Language by John Woldemar Cowan is now available to buy from Amazon.com, and just in time for the holiday season. Treat yourself or someone special!

2010

  • 5 Jan 2010 - Today, BBC Radio 4 aired another episode of its Word of Mouth program. Lojban was discussed along with Esperanto, Láadan and Klingon. To listen to it, download it.
  • 3 Feb 2010 - Work has started on making Smart.fm available to students of Lojban vocabulary. At its core, Smart.fm is an adaptive flashcard learning tool but with audio and advanced tracking features. A review can be found here. Beginners will find learning lojban vocabulary using Smart.fm fun and fast! If you already have a basic knowledge of lojban pronunciation and know how gismu work, and would like to contribute to this project, contact Jon "Top Hat" Jones.
  • 19 Feb 2010 - An invitation has been made by an author on The Sporum, the official Spore forum, for a discussion about Lojban. If you have an opinion to share with others, go for it! Spore is a popular multi-genre single-player metaverse god game published by Electronic Arts. The forum has a Science and Spore section for participants who are science buffs.
  • 2 Mar 2010 - "Where are your Keys?" is a language fluency game that rapidly builds fluency in a language by making the techniques used to teach language transparent to the student so they can be used for self-directed learning. A "Where are your Keys?" website focused specifically toward learning Lojban is now online: "lo do ckiku ma zvati". Come and play "lo do ckiku ma zvati!" Contact Alan Post for more information.
  • 10 Mar 2010 - Students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have started a Lojban Society. Hosting weekly meetings in a local pub, the group has 12 members after its first month. The group is to provide a social environment for people sharing an interest in Lojban and, in the future, act as a resource for Lojban-related projects at the University. Certainly repeatable at any university (or anywhere for that matter!). To find out more, contact [2].
  • 23 Mar 2010 - The first stage of implementing Lojban vocabulary on smart.fm has been completed. All 1300 of Lojban's root words ('gismu') can now be studied along with some 3,500 derived words ('gismu sumti'). These are organized into 'lessons', three of which are now ready. Additional lessons for learning over 600 structure words ('cmavo') are now in development. Smart.fm is an adaptive flashcard learning tool that includes audio, advanced tracking features based on a unique learning algorithm, and provides an applet for the iPhone. To take a look, go to the site, type 'Lojban' in the Search box, sign-up and start learing!
  • 4 Apr 2010 - The Lojban community's annual convention, Logfest (known in Lojban as jbonunsla), will be held during April 30 - May 2 this year at Penguicon 2010 in Troy, Michigan in the USA. Experienced lojbanists who want to talk in Lojban, newbies who want to meet some of the key people in the community, and anybody who is just interested are all invited to attend what promises to be a mind-blowing experience. For more information contact Matt Arnold.
  • 3 May 2010 - The popular children's story book The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight has been translated into Lojban by Andrew Piekarski and reviewed by Michael Turiansky. It can be listened to as well as read. For devotees of exotic scripts, a Tengwar version is available. Michael Turiansky did the first translation of one of the Berenstain Bears series - The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin.
  • 7 May 2010 - Logfest 2010 took place from April 30 - May 2 at PenguiCon 2010 in Troy, Michigan, and was a great success. Nine serious Lojbanists attended, and we attracted 3 or 4 newbies. Courtesy of Axis, here is a picture of most of the attendees, and a couple of newbies, attending a lesson.
  • 22 June 2010 - All of Lojban's approximately 1300 'gismu' (root-words), along with their 'rafsi' (short versions of the root-words) are now implemented in the Quizlet flashcard memorization website. Grouped alphabetically in 28 sets, they bring the total of Lojban word sets to 169. This huge selection of sets, grouped in so many different ways, significantly facilitates vocabulary learning. By comparison, Esperanto has 274 sets, Interlingua 22, Toki Pona 22, Ido 18, Klingon 10.
  • 4 July 2010 - Lojbanists Jorge Llambias and Leo Molas have proposed complete sets of Lojban words for all countries, languages and currencies, basing them on ISO codes. A systematic approach to the use of these codes has enabled a virtually automatic process for producing such words - one likely to work for future, as yet unspecified codes. Lojban words derived from foreign words or external sources are known as fu'ivla. The proposal is a solution to a problem that all constructed languages share. How do you go about efficiently translating tens of thousands of words that have evolved in natural languages over thousands of years within the constraints imposed by your own language rule?'.
  • 19 July 2010 - A new milestone has been reached with the implementation of over 600 Lojban's structure words ('cmavo') on mart.fm. Now, the whole of Lojban's basic vocabulary of root words, their conversions and structure words can be studied using one of the most effective learning tools currently available. Smart.fm is an adaptive flashcard system that includes audio, advanced tracking features based on a unique learning algorithm, and provides an applet for the iPhone. To take a look, go to the site, type 'Lojban' in the Search box, sign-up and start learing!
  • 25 July 2010 - Starting July 27, 2010, Lojban enthusiasts in the San Francisco area of the USA will meet together at regular intervals each month to communicate in and about Lojban. The venue is the home of Stephen Weeks in Mountainview. The format and content of these meetings will be set during the first meetings. The seriously curious as well as experienced lojbanists are welcome. Contact Stephen if you are interested in participating.
  • 9 August 2010 - The 2010 Annual Meeting of the Logical Language Group Inc, will commence on 21 August 2010 at approximately 1PM EDT, on the llg-members list. The meeting will be conducted by email. Members should be checking their members list email at least daily. Non-members who may be interested in becoming formal members of LLG should also attend. Please read the bylaws of the LLG in advance of the meeting, and perhaps a few of the minutes of prior meetings, so that you have some idea what membership is all about; the LLG typically accepts anyone who shows evidence of sufficient interest and awareness of what they are signing up for. To get access privileges to the llg-members list, non-members should contact LLG Secretary Robin Powell, preferably on IRC Chat.
  • 12 August 2010 - Leo Molas will give a presentation on Lojban at the upcoming "Jornadas del Sur" convention on Monday, August 16, in Bahia Blanca, Argentina. The subject of the convention, which lasts from Saturday, August 14 to Monday, August 16, is free software and free culture. Leo's presentation will cover: -What is Lojban? -History -Sapir-Whorf Hyphothesis -Why learn Lojban? -Basic grammar. For more information, contact Leo.
  • 9 September 2010 - A new children's book le lunra jo'u le mapku is available. This is a translation by Remo Dentato of The Moon and the Cap, written in India. This full colour PDF-format book looks just like the original, and will be a great way to introduce your children to the joys of Lojban.
  • 1 October 2010 - Starting today, Polish lojbanists have their own mailing list lojban-pl. The Polish group is currently deciding which Lojban resources to translate into Polish first. Marek Rogalski is the contact. Poland is expected to be fertile ground for Lojban, having a great tradition in the field of constructed languages. Ludwik (Leyzer) Zamenhoff, the creator of Esperanto, was born in Bialystok in 1859.
  • 5 October 2010 - Alan Post has announced that "lo do ckiku ma zvati ("Where are your Keys?") can now be played by e-mail. "Where are your Keys?" is a language fluency game that is quickly gaining in popularity among Lojban neophytes. In it's initial version, it was played interactively - requiring students to be available at the same time. The e-mail version will make it easier for students in different time zones to participate. If you are interested in playing, please join the group.
  • 6 October 2010 - Yesterday Willem Larsen, one of the creators of the language fluency game "Where are your Keys?, published a blog entry called "The Playful World of Conlangs" to the "Where are your Keys? blog. Lojban is given special mention as one of the constructed languages which has a "Where are your Keys?" community.
  • 12 October 2010 - The 2010 Annual Meeting of the Logical Language Group Inc. has closed. Bob LeChevalier (USA), Arnt Johansen (Norway) and Robin Powell (USA) were re-elected to the LLG Members board. They are joined by two new members: Timo Paulssen (Germany) and Veijo Vilva (Finland).
  • 18 November 2010 - A mind map of Lojban word types has been made available on the cheat sheet page of this website. This should be a particularly useful learning aid for beginners with strong visual memory. Check out the Learning page for more information on how to start learning Lojban.
  • 25 November 2010 - Today, Jan Szejko (ianek) gave a short presentation on Lojban to students at the renowned Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw in Poland. Students from this faculty have twice won first place at the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
  • 18 December 2010 - Are you a newbie and ready for your first read? Are you more experienced and would like to take on the challenge of introducing your children to a story in Lojban? Either way, you'll want to take a look at a new translation by Remo Dentato of If I had a Pet Dinosaur by Gil Robles. It's in full colour, nicely illustrated and a wonderful quick read!

2011

  • 6 January 2011 - All four Lojban Wave lessons have been translated into Polish and are available on Google Docs. Hopefully, this will spread the Word in Poland where there is already a small but vibrant Lojban community!
  • 20 January 2011 - In an effort to broaden the appeal of Lojban in India, home pages in the Hindi and Kannada languages have been added to this website. Hindi is one of two official languages of India and is spoken by close to 200M people worldwide. Kannada is the official language of the state of Karnataka which is the location of Bangalore and the centre of India's burgeoning IT industry.
  • 3 February 2011 - A funny story with wrong mailing happened on Haskell beginners mailing list.
  • 5 February 2011 - A French-language home page has been added to this website. Hopefully, this will draw more francophones across the world to Lojban. The home page is now available in 16 languages. More will be added in an effort to futher "internationalize" the lojban community.
  • 12 February 2011 - A Finnish version of the home page has been added to this web site.
  • 5 March 2011 - March marks the first anniversary of the setting up of the Japanese-language Google Group "lojban-soudan". The group currently has about fifteen members. A lojban study group at Tokyo University is in the process of creating a partial translation of the Lojban Reference Manual (CLL). There is also a Lojban Club at Osaka University, one of whose members is enhancing and updating the Japanese pages of this wiki.
  • 12 April 2011 - An Arabic version of the home page has been added to this web site. This is the last of the world's major languages (the six used for creating "gismu" - Lojban's root words) in which the home page of this site has been translated. In addition, the translation has been done for another eleven languages.
  • 18 April 2011 - "Introductory Lojban" is a student-run one-credit course that will be offered at Rice University in Houston, USA, starting August 23, 2011. The course length is 14 weeks, with each lesson lasting 1 hour. Registration is required for full participation. However, anyone is welcome to "sit in", but should contact the course presenter, Joe Anderson, beforehand. Each Rice-registered student will be provided with a copy of the Lojban Reference Manual. By the end of the course, students should know the basic structure of Lojban and be able to converse in it readily. For more information, contact the course presenter, Joe Anderson.
  • Fall 2011 semester contained the first Lojban Class at Rice University. Any even partially experienced Lojbanists willing to help / refresh were asked to follow the class and notify Joe Anderson (in IRC chat his name was djandus) of any issues.
  • 3 June 2011 - Here is a well-presented update on how language shapes "the most fundamental dimensions of human experiences: space, time, causality and relationships to others." Loglan, from which Lojban evolved, was originally designed to test this very idea. Although this has received diminished attention since that time, there appears to be a resurgence of interest in the scientific community.
  • July 2 2011 - The Lojban community's annual convention, Logfest (known in Lojban as jbonunsla), was held on Saturday July 2 and Sunday July 3 at the Holiday Inn in San Mateo, California, USA. Experienced lojbanists who want to talk in Lojban, newbies who want to meet some of the key people in the community, and anybody who is just interested are all invited to attend what promises to be a mind-blowing experience. Attendees can travel easily from the following airports, in order of convenience: San Francisco International Airport, San Jose Airport, and Oakland International Airport. Locals with cars are available for pickup if necessary. For more information contact Robin Powell.
  • 22 August 2011 - The Lojban community's annual convention, jbonunsla, happened over 4th of July weekend in San Mateo, California, USA. Lojbanists from all around the country convened to a single point to participate in conversation in Lojban, gaming in Lojban, and open floor activities. Pictures have been taken of the event and can be seen on the 2011 jbonunsla page.
  • The first working draft of the new textbook for newbies Lojban Wave Lessons Continued presented.

2012

  • 24 February 2012 - If you still like the feel of a book, you'll love this. An illustrated hard copy of the xorxes translation of 'Alice in Wonderland' is finally available. The book, 'lo selfri be la .alis. bei bu'u la selmacygu'e', was placed in the bookstore on the blurb.com website. Blurb is one of the leading print-on-demand service providers in the USA. Later it disappeared from that website.
  • 12 June 2012 - Robin Lee Powell, the full member of BPFK committee suggested the idea of a Lojban hackathon; that is, a time period strictly devoted to that sort of thing, ideally in person, but at least with real-time communication throughout. Currently Lojban comunity has a very long list of programming and programming-like (CLLv1.1) things that need to happen around here. Interested may write here.
  • 8 July 2012 - jbonunsla, the sometimes-annual social gathering for members of the Lojban community, will be held this year in the San Francisco Bay Area, in which many Lojbanists reside. It was held primarily on Saturday, 7 July 2012 and Sunday, 8 July 2012. The gathering will take place in a shared hotel room in San Mateo: Read details.
  • August 26 - la guskant releases crisa ditcu on YouTube.
  • September 24 la gleki starts a new wiki mw.lojban.org
  • December 10 - "Ihmisen tila - The Human Condition", an original play by Jyrki Pylväs is premiered in Helsinki, Finland. It includes a monologue in lojban translated by la selpa'i.
  • December 29 - timo presents a lightning talk about lojban at the 29th Chaos Communication C ngress, Hamburg, Germany.
  • Fancy Generation Lojbanists form a unified IRC group approving of some important extensions to Lojban grammar including treating ce'u and bridi relative clause
  • all gismu and cmavo definitions translated to Russian and imported into jbovlaste

2013

2014

  • French definitions of gismu earlier translated by Jonathan Derque have been checked by Pierr Abbatt allowing their import into jbovlaste.
  • March 5 - la selpa'i releases his second original song, «mi jufra»
  • March 23 - Wu Pan translated gismu definitions to Chinese and la mukti imported them to jbovlaste.
  • March 27 - "Simple English", a new language in jbovlaste. Simplified definitions of gismu were imported into it.
  • April 5 - danr announces the release of "korpora zei sisku", a new corpus indexing and search system.
  • la mukti makes fixes to jbovlaste dictionary to match the contemporary grammar.
  • The mw.lojban.org wiki has a lot of improvements, it posts its changes to Twitter and Facebook.