lojbo karni number 8

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Copyright, 1989, 1991, by the Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904	Beau Lane,
Fairfax	VA 22031-1303 USA Phone	(703) 385-0273
[email protected]

All rights reserved.  Permission to copy granted subject to your
verification that this is the latest version of	this document, that your
distribution be	for the	promotion of Lojban, that there	is no charge for
the product, and that this copyright notice is included	intact in the
copy.

		      le lojbo
											     karni

Number 8 - February 1989
Published by:  The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane,	Fairfax	VA 22031 USA (703)385-0273

     This publication is the news and product announcements section of Ju'i Lobypli, the quarterly publication of The
Logical	Language Group,	Inc., known in these pages as la lojbangirz.  la lojbangirz. is	a non-profit organization formed
for the	purpose	of completing and spreading the	logical	human language "Lojban".
     le	lojbo karni has	been split off as a separate publication, but retains the number of the	corresponding issue of
Ju'i Lobypli.  Your returned questionnaires indicated that a substantial number	of you did not have time to read the
longer Ju'i Lobypli publication.  In the interests of keeping you informed with	less time expenditure, le lojbo	karni
will continue to bring you news.  Ju'i Lobypli will be continue	to be published	quarterly within a couple of weeks of
this publication, and the expected contents will be summarized in this publication.  This issue	of le lojbo karni will
be distributed to about	400 people, including all JL subscribers.  Some	275 of you will	receive	Ju'i Lobypli.  You are
scheduled to receive Ju'i Lobypli if the level code on the top line of your mailing label is "1", "2", or "3", but not
if it is "0".  See below for a discussion of mailing label codes.  If you listed as mailing code "0", YOU MUST WRITE TO
US TO RECEIVE Ju'i Lobypli.
     This issue	of le lojbo karni contains 12 pages of news.  We are also including as one-time	inserts, a copy	of the
revised	Lojban brochure	and the	new "Overview of Lojban".  These will be the first two things given to any new
Lojbanist, and will hopefully provide basics as	to what	Lojban is all about.  As a result, newcomers will be more
prepared to understand the writings in Ju'i Lobypli, le	lojbo karni, and our other publications.  In the future, le
lojbo karni will be without extra attachments.	It will	probably average less than 10 pages in length.
     Your contributions	to voluntary balances and donations are	needed to defray our costs.  The questionnaire response
to JL7 was great, and we received enough contributions to pay for JL7.	However, over 100 of you still have never
responded, and some 300	of you have negative balances.	Others are paying for your materials; we are having to use
donations to pay for your copies, and this is preventing our using that	money to develop new publications and reach out
to new people.	(We know some of you can't afford to pay, and that's fine if you continue to keep in touch.)  We
strongly ask that those	who can	do so at least cover your negative balances, paying only for that which	you have already
received.
     Potential donors please note:  we have not	received IRS approval for Section 501(c)(3) status, which will
officially allow your donations	(not contributions to your voluntary balance) to be tax-deductible.  We	hope to	have
such approval by the end of the	year.  We are operating	in accordance with that	section, and your contributions	now
should be deductible if	approval is obtained later, although there is always the possibility of	disapproval.  We will
inform all donors at the end of	the year as to the status of deductibility of their gifts.  We also note for all
potential donors that our bylaws require us to spend no	more than 30% of our receipts on administrative	and overhead
expenses, and that you are welcome to make you gifts conditional upon our meeting this requirement.

Your Mailing Label

We've simplified your mailing label, and now report to you only	your current mailing status, and your current voluntary
balance	including this issue.  Please notify us	if you wish to be in a different mailing code category.	 Balances
reflect	contributions received thru 20 February.  Mailing codes	(and approximate annual	balance	needs) are defined as
follows:

Level B	- Product Announcements	Only	     Level 0 - le lojbo	karni only - $5	balance	requested
Level 1	- le lojbo karni and Ju'i Lobypli - $15	balance	requested
Level 2	- Level	1 materials and	baselined/final	products - $20 balance requested
Level 3	- Level	2 materials and	teaching materials as developed	- $50 balance or more

News of	This Issue

Results	of JL7 Questionnaire - page 2

Products - page	3		 Education - page 6
   LogFlash PC revised		    DC Lojban Class Starts
   MAC LojFlash	Users Take Note	    Status of Other Classes
   gismu Flash Cards Available	    Advertising	and Publication	Efforts
   Other New Products
				 Other News - page 8
Research and Development - page	5	News for non-USA Lojbanists
   Lojban Parser Status		    No News from The Institute
   Lojban Grammar Status	    1988 Financial Report
   Textbook Reviewers Wanted	    1989 Budget
				    Note on Our	Prices
2

lei lojbo - A continuing Lojban	comic strip - page 11
Contents of Ju'i Lobypli #8 - page 11

Enclosures
   Product List	and Order Form	 Lojban	Brochure: la lojban mo
   Overview of Lojban

Results	of JL7 Questionnaire

     We've had a very good response rate to the	questionnaire we sent out with JL7.  About 100 of you responded, and we
are still getting a few	responses trickling in now, over two months later.  Thank you for letting us know you care.  And
thank you for expressing the many and varied opinions we've received.
     The most important	response we got	led to the separation between this news	section	and JL8.  About	20% of the
respondents indicated that JL8 was too long.  We followed up on	a few responses, and determined	that some of you are not
really ready to	learn the language, some are awaiting a	final product before they get actively involved, and some just
simply don't have time to read a long journal like JL.	Coupled	with the large number of people	who still have never
responded, it made sense to separate this news section and send	it to everyone.	 Then we will send JL8 only to those who
we believe want	the greater information	that publication includes.  After sorting your responses, we still have	plenty
of JL subscribers to use bulk rate, so the result costs	us (and	therefore you) much less.  The only pain is the	extra
mailing	labor, and we are reducing that	problem	by not using envelopes on LK8 (le lojbo	karni #8) bulk rate mailing.
     Besides this decision, we found you well divided on most other questions.	For each category of article, there were
people who wanted more,	and people who wanted less of that type.  In general, most of you want more teaching materials
and translations.  A few of you	prefer that we have more original Lojban as opposed to English translations.  We'll try,
but there are only a couple of us who can write	Lojban,	and you	can see	how bad	my poetry is.  A lot of	our Lojban
writings are going into	the textbook, too.  English translations are apparently	to be avoided since they end up	being
very complex - The Lord's Prayer was cited as an example by some.
     A significant portion of you wanted fewer letters and responses, and follow-up discussions	with some of you
indicated that you want	a bit more screening and editing to make sure more of the stuff	is relevant.  We'll try, but
what is	relevant to some is irrelevant to others.  As I've said, there are numerous reasons for	supporting Lojban
development, and different people place	their priorities differently.  I suspect, however, that	the quality of letters
will improve as	more people learn the language.
     The one question we didn't	get a clear response on	was whether to report the news of other	projects.  A few of you
wanted no such news - you are interested in Lojban.  Some query	why we give 'free advertising to the competition'.
Others,	however, want more such	news; their support for	us is predicated on the	fact that we are the ones who regularly
provide	such news, even	when it	isn't favorable	to us.
     We	will try to keep both viewpoints in mind, and concentrate on news that is relevant to our efforts.  Since
'competition' isn't our	purpose, it will not guide our selection.  It may be irrelevant	- there	isn't a	lot of news to
print.
     Speaking about negative news, about 35 of the respondents were people asking to be	dropped.  Many did so because
they didn't have time for Lojban; some felt their interest level didn't	justify	our expenses.  A few asked to be dropped
until we had a textbook	completed.  Only one person dropped as an expression of	disapproval of our activities with
respect	to The Loglan Institute, Inc.; Dr. Brown of that organization had called for people to cancel their
subscriptions to JL as a measure of protest.  We received several letters of support after his request.	 We think the
vote is	decisive.
     The 35 dropouts were balanced by a	greater	number of new people, so that our numbers grew this time even with the
large number of	deletions.  We also received contributions from	a larger number	of people than ever before, although the
total amount was less than that	received after JL5.


Products
LogFlash PC revised

     Nora has revised LogFlash so that it no longer takes words	from the New Word pile randomly.  Instead, the words are
arranged in the	order that they	are presented in the textbook.	The program takes exactly your specified number	of New
Words from the pile, in	that order.  If	you have too many words	'in play', and your daily lesson time has gotten too
large, you specify to 'regroup'	with a small number of new words per lesson - 1	or 2, perhaps -	until your lesson times
drop to	an acceptable level.
     In	addition, the words are	separated into two sets.  The first set	has 900	words which can	be studied and mastered.
Then a separate	utility	program	can be used to add the rest of the words in.  This allows you to master	a subset of the
vocabulary, those words	which we have put a priority on	for the	textbook, and then pick	up the rest at your leisure.
(Note -	copies of LogFlash shipped in February and March will not have the utility, which is not yet tested; we	will
instead	put all	1357 words in a	single pile, so	that this enhancement is not applicable.)

3
     Based on our class	experiences, we	will probably make some	changes	to the word order in the final textbook, and
possibly shrink	the number of words in the first pile somewhat.	 This change is	not likely until summer	or fall.  The
order in the current LogFlash will therefore match the draft textbook lessons used in the first	round of classes.
     The final change is that we have merged LogFlash 1	(gismu)	and LogFlash 2 (rafsi) into a single, menu-driven
program.  This makes it	easier to switch between the two programs when you are doing lessons in	both.  We had originally
planned	to sell	LogFlash 2 for $20; instead we are selling the combined	LogFlash 1 and 2 for $30, or $10 for upgrade
from your current LogFlash 1 if	you are	registered.
     We	have revised and drastically shortened the user's manual.  We've been told that	the old	one was	too long, and
that no	one read it, which kind	of defeats the purpose.	 The new version doesn't have the helpful hints	that the old one
did, but perhaps it is short enough that people	will read it.

MAC LojFlash Users Take	Note

     Two weeks ago (early February), one of our	MAC LojFlash customers reported	that there were	a couple of garbled
words in the data file and that	it was impossible to get by these words.  The following	night, another user reported the
same thing.  Apparently	the rest of you	either haven't been using the program (we hope this isn't so), or had manually
corrected the files using a text editor.
     The data transfer from the	PC to the MAC was bad, so all MAC LojFlash disks probably share	this defect.  As a
result,	there are words	missing.  If you have corrected	the file manually, you may not have matched the	real data
exactly.
     Since it is our fault, we will be shipping	new disks out to you within a couple of	weeks.	If you send the	bad
diskettes back to us, we can reuse them, but you are not required to do	so.
     We	had a brief scare when one user	reported that he had detected the SCORES and NVIR viruses on his diskettes.
Checking with other users, including the one who made the copies for us, we found that none of them had	either virus on
their diskette,	so the 'infection' did not come	from us.  Be wary of these viruses, of course.	There are public domain
programs that can detect them and clean	them up; they apparently are somewhat technical	to run,	especially for the MAC
II.  We	could distribute copies, but I suspect most of you can more conveniently get them from a local source, who can
also help you run them.	 If anyone can't get these programs, let us know.

gismu Flash Cards Available

     We	were able to get gismu flashcards made at a quite reasonable price with	two minor concessions to keep the price
down.  First, the cards	do not come out	sorted,	so you must sort them manually if you want them	in textbook order.  We
have lesson codes on each card to help with this.
     The second	'feature' is that the cards are	printed	only on	one side.  On that side	we give	the lesson code, the
English	keyword, and the English place structure definition.  You must write the Lojban	word and the rafsi on the other
side.  This seems like a big flaw, but we realized that	writing	the Lojban is an excellent way to review the words prior
to your	New Word lesson.  So you take 20 cards (or however many), write	the Lojban and rafsi on	them, then test
yourself.  Since it cut	several	dollars	off the	price, and minimized problems with lining up card cuts,	we believe it
was worth it.  We include a list of words in textbook lesson order to help in quickly sorting and labelling cards.
     We	also have included some	blank cards, cards for labelling your various lesson piles, and	instructions for using
the LogFlash teaching algorithm	that was developed by Dr. Brown.  One of our class students who	has used flash cards to
study several languages	says that the LogFlash method works several times as well as any other technique he has	tried
for using cards.  We thus strongly recommend that technique, though you	can experiment with others.
     We	are selling flash cards	at a price of $12.00 for the first set,	and $10	for each additional set	(since we don't
need to	give you 2 copies of the card list and instructions).  A lot of	you expressed interest in flash	cards on your
questionnaires,	but our	finances will not allow	sending	them to	you without a specific order.

Other New Products

     We	have had some criticism	that some of you who are new to	the language are confused by the terminology, and feel
somewhat left out.  This certainly isn't our intent - some of our most important contributions have been made by
newcomers who worked at	learning what was needed.  But we don't	want to	give the impression to anyone that Lojban is
'too hard' to get into.
     As	such, we've revised the	Lojban brochure	to cover the questions newcomers most frequently ask.  The revision was
done by	Athelstan, who joined us only a	year ago himself, and has been our most	active recruiter, bringing in over 3
dozen new Lojbanists over the last few months.
     A lot of the problems newcomers face relate to the	'jargon' we use.  I try	to do better than previous writers on
the language at	explaining things as I go, a new problem has arisen.  There are	lot of you who know the	basic terms so
well now that to explain them every time is redundant.	We also	can't explain them well	enough in the glossaries that
we've been putting in JL each issue to serve newcomers needs.
     Thus, we have written the 'Overview of Lojban' as a second	step towards learning about the	language after reading
the brochure.  This presents a lot of our terminology briefly, hopefully keeping things	uncomplicated, and giving a few
examples of the	major points.  The overview isn't complete or detailed enough to learn the language, but it should give
you a framework	sufficient to follow discussions in JL and in this publication,	as well	as aid you in grasping the 'big

4
picture' when you start	to learn the language for yourself.  Those of you with JL7 may gain some benefit in reviewing
the 'quick tutorial sentences' after reading the overview.  Some of the	examples may then make more sense.
     We	have included both the new brochure and	the 'Overview of Lojban' with this mailing, since we want everyone to
have the same basic information	available to them, even	those of you who are less active and are only getting le lojbo
karni.	Your comments are welcome, as usual.
     The draft grammar description has not been	updated	or revised.  As	a result of textbook writing, I	should be able
to do a	much better job	by rewriting it.  Several of you have ordered it, and may have received	it by now.  Hopefully,
it does	some good; I won't recommend it	to those of you	who haven't gotten it.
     The cmavo list is more complete and is holding up fairly well, though portions are	obsolete.  There are only two or
three words that are missing or	which have changed, but	the explanations are not nearly	as good	as I want them to be.
Again, the textbook writing is leading to what will eventually be better explanations.
     The textbook is taking too	much of	our time for us	to make	teaching tapes at the same time.  I've put together some
decent recording equipment to allow us to make the tapes when we have time, but	not yet, and I suspect I won't have time
until after LogFest in June.
Research and Development

     R&D progress will slow in a couple	of months, since I'm going to have to go back to work so we can	eat.  Nora has
supported me (and thus the bulk	of the Lojban effort) for long enough, and our financial situation, my career status,
and the	short term outlook for Lojban all tell me that I can't continue	as a full-time Lojban worker for free, and we
aren't likely to become	rich enough to pay anyone for quite a while.

Lojban Parser Status

     There are at least	3 varieties of Lojban parsers in development.  We will cover each in turn:

     1.	Most of	our support is going towards Jeff Taylor's parser, since he has	both the knowledge of parsing techniques
and the	Lojban grammar to make his time	be used	productively.  He has been spending 10-15 hours	per week since November
on it, and just	this week sent me the first usable version, based on the grammar as of the end of October.  He is now
updating it to reflect the grammar changes made	since then.
     The parser	seems to work quite nice.  It is a preliminary version,	and isn't ready	for most of you	to use,	but it
is a great start.  There are a couple of problems in the grammar that are giving us a headache,	although they are
problems for the parser	- not 'bugs' in	the language.
     The most significant problem is the recovery of 'elidable'	terminators.  Lojban is	unambiguous because every sub-
structure that needs it	is marked with cmavo that act something	like parentheses.  In most cases, the right parenthesis,
or terminator, can be left out,	or 'elided'.  The rules	for this are not easy to put into English though - the standard
formulation is that you	can leave them out whenever the	result won't be	ambiguous, which isn't too useful.  It turns out
that YACC's method of handling these markers is	not correct for	Lojban,	and we are going to have to do some kind of
'backtracking error recovery' in the parser, for those familiar	with the computer jargon.  This	is fairly sophisticated,
and will take a	while, but doesn't affect simple sentences.
     Jeff's parser is an improvement over the previous parser built with LYCES.	 It can	take effectively unlimited
strings	of text.  There	will need to be	a few 'bells and whistles' added before	Jeff's parser is as useful to a	learner
as the older one, but it is reasonably up to date with the language, and has a few nice	features of its	own.

     2.	Jeff Prothero revised PLOP (Public Domain LO**AN Parser) late last year	to reflect the October grammar,	but he
did not	have time to write a lexer, which is needed to handle even simple sentences.  A	few of you have	asked us for a
copy, and hopefully he has responded.  Jeff P.,	who invented that portion of the language dealing with 'elidable
terminators' has solved	that problem in	PLOP, which IS a backtracking parser.  But PLOP	is fairly slow if you use
elision, whereas Jeff T.'s parser is almost instantaneous in responding	to even	a 40-sentence block of text that we
tested for the textbook.

     3.	David Bowen is the only	person who was sent PLOP who has contacted me.	He immediately recompiled PLOP to run on
a Cray supercomputer ("the fastest Lojban parser around").  He found that he could bypass the need for a lexer by
eliminating 'lexer lexemes' that we have defined in the	grammar	to force compounding of	cmavo.	This change is not
formally correct, since	it inserts some	ambiguities; some errors will occur, but in general, PLOP will parse things
correctly simply because it is 'backtracking'.

Lojban Grammar Status

     The grammar has proven remarkably stable.	There were only	minor corrections of a typographical nature between
November and February.	All of the parsers are built using a late October grammar, which isn't quite complete, though
Jeff T.	has started updating his parser	to the current grammar.
     I recently	put in one trial change	to help	reduce the elidables problem while Jeff	T. works on a permanent
solution.  It doesn't actually change the language grammar, but	rephrases it using a few extra rules, so that the parser
chooses	correctly.

5
     When Nora and I got Jeff's	parser,	we quickly found one other problem that	will take a change to the grammar to
fix.  One sentence example in Lesson 4 caused a	problem, which was minor and not likely	to be common in	conversation.
The fix	was easy.  However, in making the fix, it was realized that a significant simplification could be made with
minimal	cost.  The change involves simplifying abstraction and negation	options.
pc had argued for this change for a long time, but I hadn't been able to make it work until now.  Teaching the language
in the DC-area class significantly helped identify how the simplification made sense.
     While the change is noticeable, and affects some things that have appeared	in JL, it turns	out to be trivial to
learn.	We know	this because we	had just the week before taught	abstraction and	negation to the	class in Lesson	3.  Two
days after making the change, we told the class	of the change and worked through the Lesson 3 dialogs, identifying how
the change affected Lojban sentences.  They were able to correct the grammar on	their own after	the first couple of
examples.
     There will	no doubt be more changes, hopefully all	minor.	The grammar isn't baselined, and will not be until we
have the textbook done and there are several speakers who have proven the grammar in actual usage.  The	current
stability, and the minor impact	of the one significant change that we have made	gives us great confidence in the Lojban
grammar.

Textbook Reviewers Wanted

     As	I go through the class,	I have been writing the	textbook for each lesson before	teaching that lesson.  In
general, I am having to	make very few changes after teaching.  I seem to be writing at the level of the	class.	I am
making available draft lessons as I get	them revised to	those of you who will pay for them.  We	cannot afford to send
them to	everyone, though all JL8 subscribers will get Lesson #1.  In general, lessons are running 30-40	pages, and at
low volume copying, we will have to charge about $5 per	lesson.	 Obviously the textbook	will be	much cheaper, but some
of you may not want to wait that long.	We will	not send lessons to you	unless you specifically	order them, or unless
your balance is	above $50 and you have previously said you want	teaching materials as they are developed.  We are trying
to be cautious with your balances, since the costs are turning out so high.  (My verbosity is legendary.)  At the
writing	of this	article, lessons 1 through 3 are done, and I'm writing lesson 4	tomorrow.
     Depending on our finances,	we may be able to return some of your investment in draft lessons in the form of a
credit on the textbook FOR THOSE WHO SIGNIFICANTLY CONTRIBUTE REVIEW COMMENTS.	I can't	make promises as to how	much;
ideally, a major contributor should get	his/her	textbook for free if they paid for the draft lessons.  For those who
review the draft lessons and who have questions, we will try to	respond	fairly quickly with answers.
     The outline of the	lessons, and a copy of the revised draft lesson	1, will	be a major portion of JL8.


Education
DC Lojban Class	Starts

     By	the time this is mailed, we will have completed	five weeks of the DC-area Lojban class.	 We will probably be in
the middle of Lesson 4 of 18; we got a little bogged down in Lesson 3 after moving through the first two lessons on
schedule.  The class will continue approximately until LogFest in the middle of	June, and I think this group of	people
will really know the language by then.
     We	found to our chagrin that people do not	always answer questionnaires.  Of the 80 DC-area people	I sent class
notices	to, only 1 responded.  I then got on the telephone to everyone for whom	I had a	phone number.  After a couple of
weeks of telephoning, 16 people	signed up for a	class, and we gave up on trying	to hold	two at once.  We lost a	couple
of people before we actually started; there are	now 11 people actively attending, and two who cannot attend regularly
who are	working	through	the lessons on their own.

     We've got good enthusiastic people, and they are learning,	despite	being guinea pigs for untested teaching
materials (and teachers).  There are problems with people not having the time between classes to study up on the
vocabulary, which is heavily emphasized	in the first 10	weeks.	Instead, we spend a fair amount	of time	in class looking
up words, which	slows thing down.  The comments	I've gotten indicate that the language and the materials describing it
are clear and understandable.  Those of	you getting JL8	can judge for yourself,	and let	us know	what you think of Lesson
1.

Status of Other	Classes

     The Boston	class has not yet jelled for the same reason that we had trouble here in DC.  There are	about 40
Lojbanists in Boston, but only 1 bothered to return a class questionnaire, and that person was reporting that he was
moving away from Boston.  Brooke Albert	and Chuck Barton, who were quite enthusiastic about organizing and teaching the
class, were justifiably	depressed by the response.  The	organizational meeting they held drew only 1 person (who hadn't
returned a questionnaire).
     I'm inclined to think that	Bostonians and DC-area people don't like questionnaires, since we got very few of our
JL7 questionnaires back	from either group as well.  Otherwise, I'm somewhat mystified, since a large number of you said
you were interested in a class when you	first signed up.

6
     Brooke and	Chuck haven't given up;	they are hoping	that the fact that we have started and are successfully	teaching
Lojban here in DC will motivate	those of you in	Boston to call them up or write.  (See the phone number	in the class
insert to JL7.)	 They want to try again	in a couple of months.
     We	are hoping to play an active role at the World Science Fiction convention, which will be around	Labor Day in
Boston.	 This is big chance to show off	Lojban to a sympathetic	audience from around the world.	 We had	planned	on
having those of	you who	learned	the language in	Brooke and Chuck's class play a	part in	our activities at 'Worldcon',
but can	do so only if the class	gets started in	the next couple	of months.
     The Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City/northern	New Jersey areas are now looking like the best places to
organize classes right now.  We	have possible organizers in each area, and one of the New York Lojbanists is trying
actively to keep up with the class here	in DC with the intent of being able to teach a class up	there as soon as she
finishes.  Two or three	others up there	have expressed interest	to me, and we have discovered that at least three
Lojbanists work	in the same building without knowing each other	(the Holmdel NJ	Bell Labs plant).  This	may end	up being
a good group around which to build a class.  We	will wait a little while before	trying to organize a class unless we
start hearing from a few more of you that you are ready	to participate.	 I don't want to recruit more organizers only to
have them disappointed.

Advertising and	Publication Efforts

     I just mentioned our plans	to participate in WorldCon at the end of summer.  This is only one of several activities
planned	to spread the word about Lojban.
     We	participated again at Evecon, the science fiction convention here in the DC area over New Years	weekend.
Several	of the people in the Lojban class were recruited at Evecon.  Nora, Athelstan, and I gave a presentation, and we
handed out brochures throughout	he convention.	Athelstan also put brochures out at a couple of	other conventions,
bringing in several new	people.
     Fact Sheet	Five, put out by Mike Gunderloy, has continued to review our issues.  That magazine now	has a
circulation of 5000 or so, and we get several responses	after each issue (which	is pretty good,	since FSF consists of
about 80 pages of reviews in fine print, probably several hundred magazines in toto, and his audience has a rather
diverse	set of interests).
     Aiming at an audience likely to match ours, we have placed	an advertisement in Discover magazine; it should appear
in the May issue.  If response rates are proportional to those we've gotten from FSF, Discover's circulation of	3.4
million	should net us several thousand responses.  Then	watch our community take off.  We are also attempting to contact
several	science-media and news organizations to	encourage people to write and talk about us.  Our goals	are ambitious.
I'd like to have 2000 to 4000 Lojbanists by the	end of the year	(500-1000% growth), with comparable increases next year.
We are also trying to emphasize	efforts	to reach non-English native speakers, as the next article will discuss.	 As such
we have	been talking to	a Voice	of America representative regarding a possible interview that would be translated and
broadcast in many languages throughout the world.

Other News
News for non-USA Lojbanists

     We've heard from a	few of our non-USA Lojbanists, and they	have pointed out a problem I was afraid	of.  Not only
are our	costs higher in	mailing	to overseas locations (we can't	exactly	use bulk rate),	making our balance charges to
you higher, but	the strong US dollar and relatively lower income levels	in other countries makes our publications far to
expensive for many of our recipients.  We thus are dependent on	Americans who donate towards covering our overseas
publication expenses.
     To	help reduce costs, we are considering switching	from airmail to	surface	postage.  We get a good	rate on	printed
matter,	but we might save a little bit on foreign postage this way.  We	are thus far continuing	to send	Ju'i Lobypli to
all foreign subscribers, but need to hear from you.  After all,	we have	no other way to	know for sure that you are
receiving our publications.
     Our policy	will be	to send	to any non-USA subscriber who keeps in touch with us.  We ask that you send what you
can, even if it	doesn't	cover our costs.  Every	little bit helps.
     More than that, we	value our non-USA Lojbanists especially, since you are our ties	to the rest of the world.
Because	of this, we want to make two special offers that might help out	the financial situation:

1.  Any	Lojbanist who translates the Lojban brochure and/or the	Overview of Lojban into	another	language will receive
considerable gratitude and a balance credit more than sufficient to keep you on	our publication	lists indefinitely.  The
cost of	translation services is	so high	that we	must otherwise be much larger and richer than we currently are,	to
otherwise be able to afford non-English	publication.  (If you are going	to volunteer, please let us know so that we
don't have several people doing	the same publication into the same language).

2.  Any	Lojbanist who recruits a non-English-native speaker as a Lojbanist will	receive	a credit towards your balance of
$2 US.	Your recruit should contact us in writing, and indicate	that they were recruited by you.  (Ideally they	will use
the registration form that comes with the brochure).  (If they don't speak English at all, we may need to have you
translate their	letter first.)	We will	try this until September, and re-evaluate at that point.  We may be able to give
a higher credit	if a substantial number	of respondents are able	to pay some or all of their costs.  Similarly, if you

7
can find other Lojbanists who live close enough	that you can share publications, you can split the costs, and all of us
will benefit.

     We	can perhaps save money then by shipping	a quantity of publications to one person in your country who can then
distribute them	to others using	local mail.  We	are currently doing this in England, aided by an American serviceman who
returns	to the US in May, and have saved considerable postage.
     Given publications	and recruiting,	we may be able to build	enough of a community in your country that Lojban can be
taught there.  We really look forward to having	a group	of Lojban speakers overseas, and will go out of	our way	to aid
any non-US group that attempts to achieve that goal.
     As	a final	aid to overseas	Lojbanists, we will attempt to contact those of	you that have another countryman in our
community.  Having someone closer who is interested in Lojban makes it much easier to think seriously about learning the
language.

No News	from The Institute

     I said above that we will continue	to publish news	about The Loglan Institute, Inc. (TLI) and the efforts of Dr.
James Cooke Brown (who is honored for his creation and development of the language over	the past 35 years).  Alas, we
don't have much	news.  Dr. Brown isn't talking to me, and hasn't published any newsletter himself since	November.  One
person I've talked to got a note from him; he is apparently still working on a 'GPA' (Going Public Again), and didn't go
sailing	this winter.  Bob McIvor is doing a lot	of hard	work aiding Dr.	Brown, but I haven't heard of anyone else that
is still working with TLI.  Nora remains a member of TLI and probably the largest financial contributor	except for Dr.
Brown, himself.	 My membership has probably run	out by now, but	I've gotten no notice.
     There have	been some indirect exchanges between Dr. Brown and me regarding	our dispute.  I	have nothing I can
report except that a possible agreement	that may settle	the dispute has	been sent to TLI and is	awaiting response from
Dr. Brown.

1988 Financial Report

     In	keeping	with our open books policy, we are publishing our 1988 financial report	and our	budget for 1989.  The
1988 report is split into pre-incorporation and	post-incorporation figures.  We	continue to lose money,	and are	barely
solvent, in that we have maintained enough money to refund all your unspent portions of	voluntary balances.  Our
inventory of publications has grown along with our subscriber list, though.  If	a substantial portion of new recruits
cover their subscription costs,	that inventory will mean that we stay afloat.  We also hope that obtaining tax-exempt
status will increase the flow of donations.
     We	easily met our requirement for keeping administrative and legal	fees low.  These fees have only	included the
amounts	needed to file papers and set up the corporation.
     The following is a	report on the financial	status of The Logical Language Group, Inc. upon	the date of
incorporation, 3 November 1988.

Assets						       Liabilities
Cash in	bank account	$2232.82    Subscriber Refundable
Inventory		 $695.90       Balances		  $1501.70
Net Assets		$2928.72    Net	Liabilities	  $1501.70

Net Worth Transferred from Predecessor			  $1427.02

					      1988 Final Financial Report

				       1988 Summary - Unincorporated Predecessor

1988 Contributions Prior to Incorporation
 Pre-JL4 (50% matching)			   $190.01
 matching				    $95.00
 Post-JL4 (25% matching)		  $4713.31
 matching				  $1172.05
     Net Income				  $6170.37

LogFest					   $468.49
JL4					   $849.40
JL5					   $931.19
JL6					  $1419.43
Other Publications			  $1332.00
Research and Review Costs		   $207.82
Telephone				   $820.05
Office and Publication Supplies		   $454.26

8
Administrative Fees and	Legal Expenses	   $447.42
     Total Expenses			  $6930.06

     Net Loss				 ($759.69)

					    The	Logical	Language Group,	Inc.
					 Incorporation Through 31 December 1988

Contributions				   $513.00
Other					    $93.35
     Net Income				   $606.35

JL7					   1247.60
Other Publications, Research, and Review    265.26
Telephone				    158.05
Administrative Fees and	Legal Expenses	      5.00
     Net Expenses			  $1675.91

     Net Loss				 (1069.56)

				      1988 Summary (Incorporated + Unincorporated)

Income					  $6776.72
Expenses				  $8605.97
   including Administrative Expenses:
   $452.42 or 7% of income

Net Loss				($1829.25)

We were	technically bankrupt at	the end	of 1988.  Your responses to JL7, came during 1989.  As of this publication, we
have received about $2000 income against expenses of $1100 in 1989 and are again solvent; but some of that income is
class tuitions to be spent on lesson materials not yet prepared.

						      1989 Budget

Assumptions
Assumes	Advertising Thrice @ $200 .1% response
Additional 10% increase	in subscriptions and newsletter	costs per quarter
80% of costs covered by	people contributing to their balances.
Overhead and Administrative Expenses 10% of total
Unbudgeted Expenses 10%	of total

				     Expenses  Income
JL8/LK8	1st quarter 1989		 1050	  800
JL9/LK9	2nd quarter 1989		 1104	  845
JL10/LK10 3rd quarter 1989		 1937	 1901
JL11/LK11 4th quarter 1989		 2872	 3230
Textbooks				12000	16080
Tapes					 8000	10720
LF1/Flashcards				 4000	 5360
Classes					 4000	 3200
LogFest	89				  800
Telephone				  720
					_____	_____
Subtotal				36483	42136

10% Overhead and Administration		 3648
10% Unbudgeted Expenses			 3648
Donations (20% of income)			 8427
					_____	_____
Total					43779	50563

Net Cashflow Gain				 6784
Net Gain in Inventory Value			 7800

9
     If	we can do this well, we	won't go bankrupt, and can afford continued growth.  But $7000 won't even pay for one
half-time person, so we	must do	better than this if we are to expand when I return to work.

Note on	Our Prices

We have	been forced to raise our prices	due to the recent bad financial	period,	and the	added expenses that have come
with incorporation.  For US bulk rate mailings,	we are charging	about 7.5 cents	a page.	 For regular US	mailings of
materials that we get enough orders for, that we can print 100 or more at a time, we charge about 9 cents a page.  For
special	orders,	we have	to charge as much as 16	cents a	page.  This includes the cost of envelopes and US postage.
Canadian and Mexican charges approximate the US	regular	mailing	rates.	For other non-US mailings, we charge the same
prices,	but we also subtract the postage from your balance after mailing (so it	isn't included in the mailing label
balance).  We send overseas by surface mail unless we know you are willing to pay extra	for air	mail.  Air mail	for
printed	matter tends to	be about 30% higher than surface, probably about a US dollar on	a typical mailing.

lei lojbo - A continuing Lojban	comic strip

     A complete	discussion of the Lojban will be found in JL8, along with another comic	strip.	A brief	synopsis is:

     Bob attaches a portable 'robot' peripheral	to 'Sam' the computer.	He uses	a compound Lojban tense	to say:	"You
couldn't-and-now-can travel, O Sam".  After Sam	causes Nora to drop her	paint brush by surprising her ("Greetings! "),
chases the cat ("Wait, O Cat! "), causes Bob to	trip ("Complaint! "), the robot	is no longer.  Sam, in self-pity
(".uu"), uses an even more complex tense to say: "At some (the)	previous time, I couldn't-and-now-could-and-then-
couldn't-in-the-future travel".	 The tense is the exact	inverse	of the one found in the	English	"The Once and Future
King".	The brief expression of	such a complex idea is the source of the humor.	 This is obviously not something we
would say in English, simply because it	is too complex to manipulate the concept in words.  Presumably,	Lojban speakers
will manipulate	such complex tenses with comparable ease.  Is this a 'Whorfian effect?'


Contents of Ju'i Lobypli #8

     As	noted above, the bulk of JL8 will be draft lesson 1 of the textbook, and an outline of the rest	of the book.
     We	also have an article by	Patrick	Juola, a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs, on Lojban's potential for artificial
intelligence and machine translation.  In our previous discussions of the purposes of Lojban, I	have not talked	much
about the computer applications, since I am not	expert in AI or	machine	translation.  Patrick has expertise in the
subject	and offers a bright vision of Lojban's unique potential	contribution for the future of those fields.
     We	also have another contribution from Ralph Dumain - an annotated	bibliography of	materials related to the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis.  He also has some responses to others	comments on his	last article that we will try to fit in,
probably over the next two issues.
     We	have two song translations from	English, "The Quest" from "Man of La Mancha', and "99 Bottles of Beer" (who
promised great literature? - we	used only grammar taught through Lesson	3 of the textbook), and	another	strip of lei
lojbo.
     There are three or	four letters that I'd like to include.	There are three	responses to materials in JL6 and JL7,
and Dave Cortesi, self-taught using the	grammar	description and	the gismu and cmavo lists, translates a	biblical proverb
accurately (and	gives us a very	positive comment on the	language design).
     Finally, if I have	room, I	have letter frequency data and some ideas for updating rules for a Lojban variation of
'Scrabblertm'.	The subject was	originally addressed by	Dr. Brown in The Loglanist, volume 2, back in the 1970's.
     Some of this may fall due to editing, lack	of time, or space.  I hope to have it out about	2 weeks	after this
newsletter is mailed.