Lojban - The Logical Language

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban%20Introductory%20Brochure#intro

by gnosis • 15 years ago

64 38 15 years ago

Lojban illustrates perfectly that logic is not the most important feature of a language (since no one wants to, or perhaps even can, learn it to fluency). Arika Okrent deals with this in her (truly excellent) book In The Land Of Invented Languages.

andrewflnr3• 15 years ago

That seems a highly tenuous line of reasoning. There could be any number of other reasons for its lack of adoption so far, mostly involving the lack of other people who speak it.

gnosis3• 15 years ago

There was once a lack of other people who spoke Esperanto. Yet it flourished.

There was once a lack of other people who spoke Klingon, and yet it flourished.

There was (at around the turn of the 20th century) a lack of people who spoke Hebrew, and yet it too flourished and now there's a whole nation of people who speak it.

Lack of people who speak the language is always a problem for any artificial language... at first. Some manage to overcome this problem. Others don't. The interesting question is why this is the case, and what can be done about it.

gliese1337• 15 years ago

I have one gripe with that book- though it dispels some stereotypes, it perpetuates the idea that the primary purpose of conlanging is to fix what's wrong with natural languages, and make better ones. For many conlangs and conlangers, that's simply not true. _In the Land of Invented Languages_ is one of the best publicizations of conlanging, but the world still lacks a good overview of conlangs simply as art or experiment.

What the most important feature of language is depends on the purpose that a particular language serves. It might be better to say that logical disambiguity is not the most important feature required for human communication (although that's much longer to say). On that note, Lojban and loglangs in general have been discussed fairly extensively on the CONLANG mailing list recently; a couple of relevant messages are http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1106A... and http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1105A...

There is some standing disagreement over whether anyone has ever really become fluent in Lojban, or if they just become fluent in a creole-Lojban that merely happens to reproduce a subset of Lojban's surface forms.

DanielStraight3• 15 years ago

I didn't get that feel from the book, but then again, I was pretty familiar with conlanging (is that even the correct word?) when I read it, so that might have biased my judgement.

My impression was that part of her thesis in the book was that there is nothing wrong with natural languages. That what looks wrong is, in fact, part of what makes them work.

Turing_Machine• 15 years ago

"Loglan is fine for syllogism, circuitry, and mathematical calculations, but lacks flavor. Useless for gossip or to whisper into girl's ear." -- Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis

(I gather there's some sort of religious issue wrt the difference between Loglan and Lojban, though)

ScottBurson• 15 years ago

Huh, maybe I will try whispering some Loglan into my wife's ear and see what happens :-)

Jun8• 15 years ago

Also check Eco's The Search for a Perfect Language, it's an excellent resource.

ColinWright5• 15 years ago

ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/191/

For reference, I became reasonably fluent at reading and writing lojban. I think it's fantastic, but in the end there were few people to communicate with, no decent reading material, and too many other calls on my time.

I have a couple of ideas for web apps to help bootstrap lojban, but again, no time.

Shame, really. I like it.

gnosis3• 15 years ago

"I think it's fantastic, but in the end there were few people to communicate with, no decent reading material"

These only really matter if communicating with others and consuming content were your primary goals. If so, obviously a more mainstream language would be preferable.

But there are other things that you could do, such as create Lojban content yourself (ie. write articles, books, poems, etc..), or help others to learn Lojban (increasing the number of people to communicate with), or figure out ways to use Lojban to communicate with computers, or help improve and shape the language.

ColinWright5• 15 years ago

For several years I tried all those things. I couldn't get anyone interested in learning with me, there wasn't enough material at the right sort of level to get really fluent without years of rewardless work, and when I tried writing anything it tool literally months to write a few paragraphs to a standard that was regarded at the time as acceptable.

Maybe things have changed, but my ideas for generating large amounts of interesting entry-level material were ignored, so I finally gave up. When you work hard to produce material that no one reads, it becomes hard to care.

I have a lot more to say, but despite trying to be helpful, it will probably just come out as complaining, so rather than potentially damage the movement, I'm better leaving the enthusiasts to just get on with it without me.

Deestan• 15 years ago

ui .i mi batci le mlatu

Same here. If I ever get around to making The Computer Game Of My Dreams, I'm going to have one faction, race or species' dialogue entirely in lojban, with no translations or subtitles.

astrofinch• 15 years ago

Did you notice any impact on your clarity of thought?

ColinWright5• 15 years ago

I did notice a specific change in the complexity of my usage of tenses. My ability to reason didn't seem to change much, but I am a mathematician.

slmbrhrt• 15 years ago

I wonder if a project like Andi-Land, or another similar game or even a Zorklike, built around natural language parsing would be the right way to teach a language like Lojban.

edit: Oh, someone's already done Colossal Cave.

daniel-cussen• 15 years ago

I mistakenly assumed this was a programming language; it's actually (for now) a human language.

joeburke• 15 years ago

"How to learn Lojban

Write to The Logical Language Group, Inc., and we will be happy to provide information"

Yup. That's gonna work.

zyfo• 15 years ago

Did you even look at the page? http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Learning

Ruudjah• 15 years ago

It gets better:

"To get started, you will need to begin reading one or more of the Lojban Books"

Seriously. A Book.

anon_c• 15 years ago

Available online.

Newky• 15 years ago

Is there any resources such as an IRC channel, or chat room to train and use lojban.

Its most definetely a exciting concept, and one which I would consider pursuing.

gnosis3• 15 years ago

#lojban on freenode

andrewflnr3• 15 years ago

I would have liked to see more explained samples and less philosophy. The draft version of the book digs right in and starts explaining how it works.

http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter...

tokenadult• 15 years ago

The thread is about Lojban (I remember interacting a lot with one of the main promoters of lojban on Usenet in the 1990s), but since there is also mention of Esperanto in the thread, I'll mention one of the best online resources about Esperanto:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

I have studied a great variety of natural languages, from several different language families, and made my living for several years as a Chinese-English interpreter or translator. Conlangs are fun hobbies, but they have not enjoyed conspicuous success at solving any of the real-world problems for which they are proposed as solutions.

A good general site about conlangs is

http://www.zompist.com/kit.html

loup-vaillant2• 15 years ago

It just hit me that Eliezer Yudkowsky's Methods of Rationality's Parseltongue bears a resemblance to lojban: its limited vocabulary force its speakers to describe complex concepts with simpler terms, which makes the whole extremely readable.

sanxiyn• 15 years ago

Once upon a time I translated "The lake island of Innisfree" to Lojban.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/19725

Lack of reading materials is a problem, but I found that I enjoy writing or translating as much as reading.

Lojban - The Logical Language

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