Lojban around the world
1. Chats
Improve, learn, teach Lojban in chats: text or audio/video chats. The overall goal being to establish a broad level of conversational fluency in the Lojban community.
Here are the tools to be used as primary.
Live chat on IRC / Telegram / Slack
This is the main place of chat activity.
Mailing lists
The lojban-beginners mailing list is for questions about learning and understanding Lojban. You can subscribe to the list by sending a question to [email protected].
The general-purpose lojban mailing list, which covers anything else related to Lojban, was founded in 1989, and has about 500 subscribers. You can subscribe to it by sending an email to [email protected].
Skype and QQ
Technical rules of using Skype/QQ
Some people have trouble operating Skype. So here are the basic rules of a successful voice chat for Skype
- Use a group where all potential speakers share their interest in the forthcoming conference in text form only. This group already exists. It's called {ko ciska po'o tavla ...} (meaning "Talk by writing only...") This group is only for planning, not for actual talking. Ask in this mail thread to add you there.
- One person runs a desktop version of Skype and has good incoming and outcoming internet connection (~1Mbit/sec in both directions is fine).
- This person must add all interested people to his/her friend list and those people must confirm "friendship".
- This person calls the first person and after successful connection drops other people into the chat window.
- Please, everyone switch off your video by pressing on the video button so that it becomes crossed out.
- Before any conference check your microphone and audio settings of Skype. Add "echo123" user (it's a bot) to your friend list, call it and follow the instruction. Change settings of your Skype client if necessary.
- If you have noise around you during the conference or if other members notice a noise from your side switch off your microphone by pressing on the Microphone button so that it becomes crossed out.
I think that as of now Skype is preferable since it has better voice compression and buffering mechanisms preventing clicks/pauses during conversation due to unstable internet connection. As of now it's unlikely that 100% of potential students of Lojban get normal internet connection. Many even change to mobile connection dropping the level of fast + stable internet connection even more.
QQ messenger used in China tested several times with mainland China residents and non-residents works okay. Just like Skype.
Skype Phone Group Topics
Read more: Skype and important issues of it.
You can arrange a voice call (phone or VoIP) with another Lojban speaker at any skill level. A lot of people have expressed concern about the phone group with respect to the "well, what would we talk about?" issue. I'm pretty sure that discussions about that will take up a lot of space, so please see the Phone Group Topics page.
We welcome anyone, regardless of expertise, physical location or monetary resources.
To join, just add people above to your Skype friends' list and ask who might be available to talk with you.
In an ideal universe, Robin Lee Powell'd like to see people matched up with people of very different levels of ability, to spread the expertise around as quickly as possible, but I'm not hugely attached to that.
Lojban On The Phone
Please bear in mind, everyone, that collision avoidance is hard on the phone. Please become familiar with ta'a, re'i, be'e, je'e, ki'a and ke'o. Especially that last one. :-)
Here's a phonetic alphabet for spelling words on the phone.
Other tools
- A group in Google+ where you can videochat in real-time with other Lojbanists less popular tools:
- Mumble: a vocal chatroom
- Cinch is an audio-blogging service which allows its users to record directly to the website or phone in to record.
- direct browser-to-browser chats like appear.in.
About Expertise
The "expertise" field in the members table is currently rather informal, and you are welcome to alter yours as you feel appropriate. However, Robin Lee Powell and Nick Nicholas have had their expertise certified in person. The reason behind such system is the option of making the phone group into a ranking system, similar to Chess rankings. In other words, if you want to be certified Expert level, you ask Robin or Nick to take some time to call you up and basically hammer away at you for an hour. You, in turn, can then certify people at rankings below Expert (or, possibly, at or below expert).
Note that any use of word lists in any such tests would be cheating.
2. Real life clubs
Organize in real life Lojban clubs based on your physical location on the planet:
- Southeast Michigan Lojban Group - A group of about half a dozen Lojban enthusiasts met at Matt Arnold's house in Redford, Michigan about every two weeks (except when college is in session, because so many of them are undergrads, grad students, or teachers). Regular attendees include Bruce Webber, TheRomp, Shaun Klein, Neil Eppstein, and Alex Martini. The group has been going in one form or another since March 2005.
- A Lojban group started at Grinnell College in Iowa, in October 2006.
- Jay Kominek is interested in starting one at the University of Colorado, let him know if you're in the area.
- Robin Lee Powell used to teach a class in the Silicon Valley area, in Northern California. He'd be willing to do so again if enough people were interested. I know two people here that would attend, but I'd be interested in other jbopre joining.
- Anagram is interested in informally gathering for a workshop of beginners in the Bakersfield, California area. Try contacting him via irc.freenode.net. My registered nick is Anagram, you may leave me a memo via memoserv.
- Arnt Richard Johansen will teach anyone in 'Trondheim, NO' who is interested. Contact him at arj ATT nvg dot org.
- There has been talk of some of us Southern Californian jbopre getting together in Pomona monthly. More info at SoCalLojbanists.
- For Aussies in and around Sydney, I (la .djunias.) am looking to start a Lojban club near Macquarie University. If you're interested, please contact me!
- In Hong Kong, I (sorpa'as plat) am trying to start the Hong Kong Lojbanist Group. Open Innovation Lab once helped us organized a Lojban meetup.
Here are some of the places known to have a high concentration of Lojbanists, or some influential Lojbanists:
- Fairfax, Virginia
- New York, New York
- California
Mark yourself on the world map
For now a Google map is used to mark Lojbanists' location on the planet to figure out where new clubs can be organized.
Don't be shy to mark your location on the planet.
3. Festivals
Organize conferences and festivals. The only annual festival by far is jbonunsla.
Database of Lojbanists
For fulfilling the first two goals:
i ko jmina le cmene e lei tcila va'o le nu do se cinri le nu penmi loi drata jbopli vi le se xabju be do Put your name and contact information here if you're interested in getting together with other Lojbanists in your area or talking via audio/video chat. |
lo cmene | fluency | lo gugde | also speaks | e-mail/id on Skype | more precise location | notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
la lojbab (lobja'a) | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | Fairfax VA, near DC, and that's where Logfest is always held | a founder of the LLG. This language might not exist without him and the others he worked with to make Lojban public domain. | |||
Nora LeChevalier | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | Fairfax VA, near DC, and that's where Logfest is always held | lojbab's wife, and has done huge amounts of work on Lojban, largely on the wordlists and software. | |||
Jay Kominek | lo gugde'usu (USA) | Boulder, Colorado | |||||
la .djunias. | gugde'a'u (Australia) | Sydney | I am looking to start a Lojban club near Macquarie University, Sydney. If you're interested, please contact me! | ||||
Nick Nicholas | gugde'a'u (Australia) | was the first fluent Lojban speaker (he insists that he was the second, but he's known to be excessively modest). He also has done a lot of Lojbanic writing, both writing in lojban and about it. | |||||
.pier. abat. = Pierre Abbat | medium | lo gugde'usu (USA) | Francais | mrilu, skype: pierre.abbat | North Carolina, EST | ||
.kreig.daniyl. | lo gugde'usu (USA) | North Carolina | lojbo pemci finti | ||||
John Cowan | lo gugde'usu (USA) | New York City | the author of the Complete Lojban Language. What more can you say? | ||||
la xod = InventYourself | Intermediate | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | New York City, EST | |||
Edward Blevins | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | (Austin, TX)) / 512.796.6661 | ||||
Adam Raizen | gugde'ilu (Israel) | mrilu | |||||
Ivan Derzhanski | lo gugdebugu (Болгария) | ||||||
Arnt Richard Johansen = tsali = Broca | intermediate | lo gugdenu'o (Norway) | mrilu | CET | |||
Raphaël Poss | lo gugdefuru (France) | mrilu | |||||
jexOm. = JérômeDesquilbet | lo gugdefuru (France) | ||||||
la .ilmen. | lo gugdefuru (France) | ||||||
Mark Shoulson aka clsn, .mark. | lo gugde'usu (USA) | in New Jersey | |||||
Theodore Reed = rizen = bancus | medium | lo gugde'usu (USA) | [mailto: [email protected] mrilu], skype: tedreed | Ontario, Southern California, PST | |||
John Clifford = pc | lo gugde'usu (USA) | St. Louis, MO | |||||
djin.meiz. | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | Tidewater/Hampton Roads, VA | ||||
Robin Lee Powell | expert | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu, skype: rlpowell | Northern California, the Silicon Valley area, PST | his web site. Yours truly, is the current webmaster of this site and the provider of the machine and bandwidth it is served from. | ||
xavier | lo gugde'usu (USA) | school is in Rochester, NY, but himself is from Newton, MA. | |||||
stevo | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | Cincinnati, OH | ||||
Matt Arnold = epkat = Eppcott | beginner | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu, skype: matt_arnold | Detroit/Ann Arbor, Michigan, EST | |||
Björn Gohla | lo gugde'usu (USA) | http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~bjoern/ | |||||
Lindar Greenwood | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | Hollywood, California, willing to travel to (almost) any part of LA county for meetings. | ||||
rem.klajis | lo gugde'usu (USA) | Phoenixville, Chester County, pa | |||||
la .alyn.post. | lo gugde'usu (USA) | xabju lo la'o .gy. Rio Grande .gy. rirxe ma'arbi'i pe la'o .gy. New Mexico .gy. | |||||
Mike Fairhurst | mrilu | looking for Lojbanists around Portland, Oregon | or facebook me | ||||
Twitch | mrilu | learning lojban in Montpelier, Vermont | would love to work with others | ||||
cizyprijev | mrilu | https://twitter.com/#!/cizyprijev | |||||
Dr. James Cooke Brown | lived in the US | ||||||
Avital Oliver | gugde'ilu (Israel) | mrilu | |||||
Alex (Sasha) Gontmakher | gugde'ilu (Israel) | mrilu | |||||
Jorge Llambías aka la .xorxes. | lo gugde'aru (Argentina) | mrilu | |||||
la tsani | lo gugdecu'a (Canada) | Montreal | |||||
Adam Lopresto = Eimi = la xalbo | expert | lo gugdecu'a (Canada) | mrilu, skype: adamlopresto | CDT | |||
Viktor Medrano | lo gugdecu'a (Canada) | .i mi zvati le lulus. zei daplu | |||||
la gleki | lo gugderu'u (Россия) | русский | основной контакт для русскоговорящих | ||||
Русскоязычное сообщество | lo gugderu'u (Россия) | ||||||
Cyril Slobin | lo gugderu'u (Россия) | русский | mrilu | Москва | http://slobin.pp.ru/english.html | ||
Ark Balandin | expert | lo gugderu'u (Россия) | русский | skype: ark.balandin | GMT + 4 | ||
A. W. Tüting (.aulun.) | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | mrilu | |||||
Timo Paulssen = timonator | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | Deutsch | mrilu | ||||
Björn Gohla | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | mrilu | |||||
Philip Newton = pne = .filip. | beginner | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | mrilu | Hamburg, CEST | |||
Jens Gutzeit = .iens. | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | mrilu | Berlin | ||||
.iesk. | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | mrilu | berti dotygu'e | ||||
la selpa'i | lo gugdedu'e (Deutschland) | Berlin | |||||
And Rosta = And Rosta = AndRosta | lo gugdegubu (United Kingdom) | London & Preston. | No point meeting me if you want to practice Lojban conversation! I have never really got round to learning such conversationally vital stuff as gismu, BAI, tense, UI... That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try a bit, tho. | ||||
Colin Fine | lo gugdegubu (United Kingdom) | ||||||
Evgenii Sklyanin = la .evgenis. | lo gugdegubu (United Kingdom) | mrilu | York | earlier in St. Petersburg | |||
greg., Gryon, Gregory Dyke | Beginner | lo gugdecuxe (Switzerland) | mrilu, [mailto: [email protected] mrilu] | CET | |||
Veijo Vilva (veion) | lo gugdefu'i (Suomi) | mrilu | Porvoo/Borgå | http://galactinus.net/vilva/ | |||
Martin Norbäck, G?org, norpan on irc | beginner | lo gugrsferie (Sweden) | mrilu | ||||
ShaeErisson | lo gugrsferie (Sweden) | mrilu | Boden | ||||
Roger Norling | lo gugrsferie (Sweden) | mrilu | Sundsvall | ||||
Marek Rogalski | lo gugdepulu (Polska) | polska | mrilu | ||||
Robin Turner aka la solri | lo gugdeturu (Türkiye) | finti la'oi L4B | |||||
Alex Burka aka la durka | lo gugde'usu (USA) | español | mrilu | Philadelphia | |||
Jordan DeLong | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu | CST | ||||
selckiku = Brett Douglas Williams = mungojelly | expert | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu, skype: selckiku | EST | |||
Stephen Weeks = Tene | intermediate | lo gugde'usu (USA) | mrilu, skype: srweeks | MST | |||
Steve Pomeroy = ? | Beginner | mrilu | EST | ||||
Kevin Reid = kpreid | Intermediate | mrilu, skype: kpreid | EDT | ||||
Alex Martini = aleks | Beginner/Intermediate | mrilu, skype: amartini51 | EST | ||||
Jonathan Strickland = djanatyn | Beginner/Intermediate | mrilu | EDT | ||||
William McMillian = Very_Bill | Beginner | [mailto: mrilu], skype: William McMillian | MDT | ||||
Remy Way = remklajis | Beginner/Intermediate | mrilu, skype: rem.klajis | EST | ||||
Gianmarco Molino = mercrutio | Beginner | mrilu, skype: mercrutio.11235813 | MDT | ||||
Ashley P. = eclen | Beginner | mrilu, skype: kiriel.ambar | EST | ||||
cein | |||||||
.maiky'elsym. = graywyvern | finti lo lojbo pemci | ||||||
la rab.spir | finti lo jbozgi | ||||||
John Schock = .djancak. | |||||||
.aionys. = eyeonus | |||||||
Athelstan | |||||||
Goran Topic | |||||||
.iusris. | |||||||
John Leuner | |||||||
jezrax | |||||||
komfo,amonan = Adam Cooper = adamgarrigus | |||||||
.lidaniyl. | |||||||
LordBrain | |||||||
marktillinghast | |||||||
Plastic Raven | |||||||
skaryzgik = Marjorie Scherf | |||||||
tinkit | |||||||
Oren Robinson | 普通话 | mrilu | |||||
Leonardo Molas | español | mrilu | |||||
rprije | Intermediate | skype: robreim3 | UTC+8 | ||||
Brendan (Tang Wei), ahbrendan | Beginner | mrilu, skype: ahbrendan | UTC+8 | ||||
la .dzyLON. (Zilong Li) | Beginner | lo gugdecunu (中國) | English, 中文, 한국어, español, Deutsch | mrilu, | UTC+2 | ||
la ramcinfo, Dmitry Kourmyshov, mindszenty on irc | beginner | lo gugderu'u (Россия) | English | mrilu | St.Petersburg | ||
mark.xafirkamp | panoce'i lo gismu .e xo lo cmavo (10% of gismu and ??? cmavo) | lo gugde'usu (USA) | lo glibau (English) mi milxe lo sanbau djuno (Español, pero solamente un poco) | Flagstaff, Arizona | I'm interested in meeting any jbopre in Flagstaff and talking with technology/computer/programming-oriented jbopre around the world. .i mi nintadni lo jbobau .i mi na kakne lo nu tavla fo lo jbobau kei ku lo nu na ralte lo jbobau vlacku | ||
la uakci = Bruno Panasiewicz | fluent | lo gugdepulu (Polska) | lo bangupulu (Polski), lo glibau (English), lo ponbau sei tolcre (Japanese, kind of) | mrilu, Skype: bruno.panasiewicz, Discord: uakci, Twitter: @la_ractu | UTC+1 (Krakow) (DST: UTC+2) | ||
timoteios | very basic | lo gugde'a'u (Australia) | lo glibau (English)
lo fasybau (très mal français) |
timoteios | Brisbane, Australia | A room would be available if you wanted to stay in Australia for a holiday. | |
la lalxu = Lynn | certu | la beljik (Belgium) | se baurnuludu (Nederlands) se glibau (English) ponbau tadni (日本語学習者) se sperybau (Esperanto) se tokpona (toki pona) |
Discord: lynn#5381 Twitter: @chordbug (to pu jeku'i de'a .u'u co'e la'o tu. @la_lalxu .tu ji'a toi) |
|||
la .niftyg. | lazni jbopre | lo gugdejupu (Japan) | se ponbau (日本語) |
Organizations
The Logical Language Group
... and its affiliated organizations
Contacting The LLG by e-mail
You can contact the LLG by e-mail using our our web-based e-mail form, or the list of e-mail addresses below.
- Web Master [email protected]
- President [email protected]
- Vice President [email protected]
- Secretary/Treasurer [email protected]
- General Inquiries [email protected]
Contacting The LLG by postal mail
The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane
Fairfax, VA 22031, USA
(703) 385-0273
Less known places
The Lojban community has a vibrant and growing online presence. Only a portion of Lojban websites are listed here, as this community is growing and changing too fast to list them all.
This section contains a list of various forums in which people discuss Lojban or discuss in Lojban, in approximate order of popularity as far as the main community is aware.
Learning websites
la laxma'i spaji spaji, the bilingual Lojban/English blog, can be helpful for learning both how various English idioms may be translated into Lojban, and how to use a wide range of Lojban cmavo (mainly in a narrative tone).
Mailing lists
Other than the primary mailing lists, the following special interest lists exist:
- Lojban FreeForums
- jbofanva is a mailing list for translation projects.
- http://lojban.livejournal.com/
- The Lojban Announcements Mailing List is for single posts on topics of general community interest.
All posts to this list are moderated, and all must include a description for where followup conversation should go. For example: "there are now Lojban flashcards on smart.fm; follow up discussion should go to the Beginners list" (but presumably with more detail). This is NOT a discussion list. The list does not set Reply-To, so you should set it to where you want followup discussion to go, if you know how.
The announcement list sends to just about every Lojban email list there is. People can also subscribe to it directly, if they want to get announcements of general community interest but do not want to be on the main mailing lists.
Anything likely to be of interest to large segments of the Lojban community is on topic. In particular, "I'm starting Lojbanic project X and need help/feedback" is what the list is primarily intended for.
- xedbig, AKA Hedwig, a private, moderated list with rules (you must be nice, you must speak in Lojban, and you may not criticise how other people speak Lojban)
- kasyjda, for discussion of the chaos religions, such as Discordianism
- the bpfk mailing list, for language development issues
- xadni, a largely unused list for discussion of the experience of having a body, or something like that
- lo jbocertu cu bau casnu vecu'u la jbosnu (nothing but spam these days)
- The jboske, or lojbanic science list was used for extremely detailed discussions of technical and linguistic issues related to Lojban.
- jefnuz is a subscribe-and-don't-post list for receiving the weekly community news.
- snakarni is a list for audio-bloggers, especially for CinchCast users.
- Loĵbanistoj is a lojban mailing list where discussions occur in Esperanto
- lojban-zasni is a lojban mailing list for experimental grammars
Social network groups
- Группа ВКонтакте (rusko)
- http://facebook.com/groups/Lojban/ - the group in Facebook.
- https://plus.google.com/communities/105661163321603750740 - the group in Google Plus.
- Quora.
Microblogging
As microblogging has become more popular among the internets as a whole, it's also started to be noticed in Lojbanistan.
- identi.ca, sometimes known as la .aidentikar. There was a Lojban group called !lojban.
- Twitter Lojbanic posts on Twitter are sometimes tagged #lojban, but it's also fun to search for Lojban without the # to see what random strangers are saying about us!
- Reddit has a page where Lojbanic news are often published.
- Shapado website has a Lojban page.
Game Servers
Currently active game servers designed as a place for lojbanists to meet and play games, often as a form of language immersion.
- jbogugde Minecraft Server is a vanilla Minecraft server running version 1.16.3 working towards building a community of builders
Other Forums
- The Lojban MOO is a type of MUD (a multi-user online text adventure game, sort of) that is fully bilingual in its command set.
- The Lojbanic Interactive Story is a web-based story writing forum. The story itself is all in Lojban. Anyone can add to it, please go contribute!
- Lojban.forumer
- There has been a LiveJournal community for Lojban for a long time, though it's often sleepy.
Archives Of Past Discussions
Mailing List Archives
There are locally stored archives of a number of lists. Those lists are no longer updated.
- The main Lojban mailing list. To subscribe to the list via email (in case you don't want to use the Google Groups interface), write an email to: [email protected]
- The lojban-beginners list. To subscribe via email, write to: [email protected]
- Lojban-es, the Spanish Lojban list
- Lojban-fr, the French Lojban list
The Google Groups lists have complete, searchable archives stored in Google Groups itself.
In addition to this, for research purposes, there are as-complete-as-humanly-possible archives of all Google Groups lists stored as UNIX mail files on one of the lojban.org computers. If you need access to them, mail the LLG secretary.
IRC Logs
Public logs of the lojbanic portions of the IRC channel are available.
Note: the logs are filtered so that they contain only Lojbanic text. However, you might still be offended by the things discussed there. If you are, that's your problem, and the LLG explicitly disclaims responsibility for anything said on the IRC channel, including by members or officers of the LLG.
Furthermore, no guarantee is made as to the correctness of the Lojban therein.
Lojbanic Websites
None of these sites are officially associated with the LLG in any way.
- http://jboselkei.lojban.org is an online game of translation from English to Lojban, featuring rating calculation for users. If you don't know how this or that is translated to Lojban, ask it in jboselkei, and as the game proceeds, expect to see one or even more translations of your 'post' made by jboselkei players, with comments. If you are an experienced lojbanist, you will always find a couple or more challenging 'tough nuts' awaiting your translation and promising rating points. jboselkei first appeared in Beta form in mid March 2006, and was upgraded for appearance and usability in November 2006. Playing in jboselkei is very exciting; you are welcome to join!
- jbovlaste - a lojbanic dictionary program from Jay Kominek.
- la jbotcan -- an anonymous bulletin board.
- uikipedias -- Lojbanic Wikipedia.
- Reddit Lojban Group -- a social news website.
- Google Lojban Group
- The official LLG Projects page
- la danti manti is tsali's very infrequently updated weblog.
- la roldei balfipmabru is jezrax's site.
- la .jbosev. "Lojban Dreams" of Viktor Medrano.