Lojban Discussion

[Air Gear]

Haha, so nobody knows anything about the ISL family (International Stalker Language)?

...perhaps I've said too much already...

[Verysillyman]

That anything to do with the whole opening and shutting of curtains to tell them you know they're watching... but don't stop?

[Air Gear]

That anything to do with the whole opening and shutting of curtains to tell them you know they're watching... but don't stop?

No, it's a family of languages...they tend to be written and known by exactly one person, making it possible to write whatever the hell you want with little risk of being decoded. The name of this family of languages comes from IRC and one guy who had his little language for the specific purpose of stalking multiple people. However, we are in need of spoken variants, more "universal" (among sketchy people) forms, and more ideas on how to form these languages

[skeptical scientist]

However, we are in need of spoken variants, more "universal" (among sketchy people) forms, and more ideas on how to form these languages

No, because then it's only a matter of time before the police get people who can speak it. Wait, that's probably actually a good thing.

p.s. I like your use of "we"

[Mike Graham]

I'd like to learn Esperanto, then go around acting like it's my native language and I don't speak any English.

...I'm not entirely sure why, but I'd like to do it.

I'm sorry I'm the one who has to break this to you, but here goes: you're a nerd. You are and will be fascinated by such things. It's OK, you can make it through.

[Air Gear]

However, we are in need of spoken variants, more "universal" (among sketchy people) forms, and more ideas on how to form these languages

No, because then it's only a matter of time before the police get people who can speak it. Wait, that's probably actually a good thing.

p.s. I like your use of "we"

Well, remember that ISL is just the blanket term for the class which may or may not be used for stalking, but you bet it's useful for anything which really shouldn't be understood by people around you.

[RAPTORATTACK!!!]

I think it's something like "Funny you don't want to be friends with me."

Either that or people that don't believe this is easier are funny, wanna be freinds?

I dunno, i thought i saw a false in there when i used a translator.

[william]

le mi zdani cu fagri

[ryan]

Lojban?

Nah, I'm not really into Pokemon.

[phlip]

The translated version of the comic doesn't seem to be linked to from the English version any more...

[jamesmcm]

Heh, my grandad speaks Esperanto. He's really good at it too, he reads loads of books in it and used to run a local club for it. I'd like to learn an artificial language and I think that every nation's schools teaching Esperanto or Lojban or whatever as a second language would be great.

[william]

Esperanto? THIS IS SPARTA!.

[clock]

I'd like to learn an artificial language and I think that every nation's schools teaching Esperanto or Lojban or whatever as a second language would be great.

An artificial language, as opposed to, what, baby talk?

[bbctol]

I'd like to learn an artificial language and I think that every nation's schools teaching Esperanto or Lojban or whatever as a second language would be great.

An artificial language, as opposed to, what, baby talk?

An artificial language as opposed to a natural language. Elvish ftw!

[clock]

Hmm... If I had 10 posts, I would link to the wikipedia article entitled, "Natural Language" and said something about not knowing about that. But I don't so I won't.

[Alpha Omicron]

Lojban Hol Esperanto Hol je yIjatlhbe'! tlhIngan Hol yIjatlh!

[eyu100]

The exact translation of the alt-text means "Lol, that's false. Do you want to be my friend?".

[Lester :P]

I've never understood why we can't get a single language going worldwide, the world is so small these days.

What bugs me is that my own language, english, is totally incapable of expressing things that other languages talk about with ease, and as such, I cannot fully comprehend the nature of that thing.

Think about schadenfreude, there is no word in the english language that means exactly what it means, even our translation of it is sorely lacking the essence of the word, and since language shapes our thoughts, we can't actually think about the same schadenfreude that german people do, because it's just not in there.

In japanese there is something like 100 different words for rain, each expressing a slightly different type of rain, and it bugs me that I all I can do when I think about rain is add adjectives to the word 'rain'.

Just my little pet peeve.

[Murgatroyd]

In japanese there is something like 100 different words for rain, each expressing a slightly different type of rain, and it bugs me that I all I can do when I think about rain is add adjectives to the word 'rain'.

Where were all these words when I was learning Japanese? I also think you'll find that English isn't exactly lacking in words for rain. We have words for drizzle, downpour, and quite a few things in between.

[jacqueline]

I've never understood why we can't get a single language going worldwide, the world is so small these days.

What bugs me is that my own language, english, is totally incapable of expressing things that other languages talk about with ease, and as such, I cannot fully comprehend the nature of that thing.

Think about schadenfreude, there is no word in the english language that means exactly what it means, even our translation of it is sorely lacking the essence of the word, and since language shapes our thoughts, we can't actually think about the same schadenfreude that german people do, because it's just not in there.

In japanese there is something like 100 different words for rain, each expressing a slightly different type of rain, and it bugs me that I all I can do when I think about rain is add adjectives to the word 'rain'.

Just my little pet peeve.

While I don't really disagree with you (I would be very happy if I could learn ALL the languages, natural and constructed), I'd argue that you bring up something that is actually pretty cool about English: we do have a word for schadenfreude now, it's schadenfreude! Since there is no governing body dictating what is and isn't "real" English, we can just absorb these words and begin to think with them. (Another couple examples: grok, deja vu)

(edit, whoops, html "no", BBCode "yes")

[Alpha Omicron]

@ Lester: Down with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis! But not really...

[Rilian]

Lojban is made of fail.

[Alpha Omicron]

Lojban is made of fail.

You have provided no evidence for your claim. To Kansas with ye!

[Surgery]

In japanese there is something like 100 different words for rain, each expressing a slightly different type of rain, and it bugs me that I all I can do when I think about rain is add adjectives to the word 'rain'.

Just my little pet peeve.

but that's exactly what adjectives are for! instead of needing a bajillion words for each tiny variation of a single object, concept or event, we can just make various combinations of adjective-noun or somesuch. it's unlikely the original constructors of a language would create a word for something like "beautiful decay", but in english (and many other languages, not to discriminate) we have a phrase: "beautiful decay".

[Xachariah]

In japanese there is something like 100 different words for rain, each expressing a slightly different type of rain, and it bugs me that I all I can do when I think about rain is add adjectives to the word 'rain'.

Where were all these words when I was learning Japanese? I also think you'll find that English isn't exactly lacking in words for rain. We have words for drizzle, downpour, and quite a few things in between.

cloudburst, condensation, deluge, drencher, drizzle, fall, flood, flurry, hail, dew, mist, monsoon, pour, precipitation, rainfall, rainstorm, sheets, shower, sleet, spate, sprinkle, shower, torrent, etc.

I'd argue that this is a failure of having too many objects and not enough modifiers. If we had just one unified word for water condensing from the sky and better descriptors for the speed/density/direction/temperature of the downpour, we'd probably be much better at accurately describing all types of rain.

Then again, I'm also fond of using hex codes instead of real colors. "Where's Ted?" "Oh, he's standing in line there, don't you see him in the 2A55FF shirt?" (which happens to be blue, well more like a periwinkle. malglico)

[Moo]

Oops

[Moo]

This completely breaks that adjective ass noun ambiguity too.
Weak ass sauce...

adjective ass-noun
Weak ass-sauce

He he he.

[zombie_monkey]

I know at least one person who is fluent in lojban, but I have not had the patience to acquire this kind of proficiency myself.

[Rilian]

Lojban is made of fail.

You have provided no evidence for your claim. To Kansas with ye!

I'm just opining....

Anyway, I don't see the point of Lojban. And I don't see how it could be very expressive. I think, that to have a language capable of conveying intricacies, you have to accept the casualty of some confusion and ambiguousessness. Language works best among people who know each other really well. The same phrases come to mean different things in different microcosms. One standardized language for everything, all time time, everywhere = bad idea.

[teucer]

Anyway, I don't see the point of Lojban. And I don't see how it could be very expressive.

All languages are capable of expressiveness. Some moderately-good Lojban poetry exists. (And some bad Lojban poetry, including some of my own - because my more-intensely-into-Lojban years and my teen-writing-bad-poetry years collided amusingly.)

The one thing many of us find lacking is high-quality puns. Jokes like "mi'a te cmene ra lu ractu cafmi'a li'u ki'u le nu ra ctuca mi'a" don't really cut the mustard.

For those who are wondering - it's from Alice in Wonderland. The original is "We called him 'Tortoise' because he taught us", which is probably a true homonym as Carroll would've pronounced it; the Lojban uses "rabbit who laughs a lot", or perhaps "one who often laughs at rabbits" (syntactic ambiguity is absent in Lojban, and it is unambiguously clear that "rabbit" modifies "frequent laughter", but the exact relationship between the two in this type of phrase is to be interpreted from context) because "ra ctuca mi'a" (he taught us) and "ractu cafmi'a" ("rabbit who laughs a lot") sound similar. They're different by only one sound, the f in "cafmi'a", but the stress is wrong - it's on the first syllable of both "ractu" and "ctuca".

I think, that to have a language capable of conveying intricacies, you have to accept the casualty of some confusion and ambiguousessness.

Lojban expresses what it does express without syntactic ambiguity. It doesn't automatically turn everything you say into something that specifies every detail of what you're discussing. Note the ambiguity inherent in tanru (phrases in which one word modifies another) mentioned above, for instance, or the fact that you can just as easily leave information out to be (mis)interpreted from context as in any other language.

Language works best among people who know each other really well. The same phrases come to mean different things in different microcosms.

Yep. And the Lojban-speaking community is a community that has developed some of its own norms, and its own specialized meanings for things. (A notable example is the word "badyxu'e", literally meaning "big read thing" - it refers to the standard Lojban reference grammar, The Complete Lojban Language by John Cowan. In a community of thousands, it's quite likely there would be plenty of people for whom "badyxu'e" meant a different large red object.)

One standardized language for everything, all time time, everywhere = bad idea.

I take it you're not so keen on Esperanto?

mu'o mi'e .tusr.

[Rilian]

It's ok to attempt a standardized language, because being able to communicate with other people is good. But languages will separate into dialects.

I think I was refering to semantic ambiguity, not syntactic ambiguity.

edit:
Having one language that's totally unambiguous reminds me of 1984. As I read that book, I wondered how they would keep people from developing dialects among friends and families. It seems that the only way to do that would be to limit or eliminate familial and friendship bonds. It would require total control over individuals and then they wouldn't really be individuals.

I'm always annoyed, when learning another language, when someone (usually a professor) tells me, "yes, that's grammatically correct... but they just don't say it that way!" and they mean that if I say it that way, I'll be "wrong". They want me to learn and mimic the 'spanish' that is already spoken by other people. They don't want me to assimilate spanish as my language. They want me to think and behave as if spanish were someone else's language that I have no right to 'alter'. But it's not. Any language I speak, to any extent, is mine.

[Moo]

I'm always annoyed, when learning another language, when someone (usually a professor) tells me, "yes, that's grammatically correct... but they just don't say it that way!" and they mean that if I say it that way, I'll be "wrong". They want me to learn and mimic the 'spanish' that is already spoken by other people. They don't want me to assimilate spanish as my language. They want me to think and behave as if spanish were someone else's language that I have no right to 'alter'. But it's not. Any language I speak, to any extent, is mine.

While I find your point fascinating and logical, what is the point of learning a language if it is only your own, and you cannot communicate with other speakers in the way that they understand (i.e. coloquialisms)? It's not rhetorical, I'm asking.

[dschneider]

Due to this topic being at the top of the forum, I've now spent my entire morning going through "Lojban For Beginners".

.u'e

[Rilian]

While I find your point fascinating and logical, what is the point of learning a language if it is only your own, and you cannot communicate with other speakers in the way that they understand (i.e. coloquialisms)? It's not rhetorical, I'm asking.

I'm saying that I can, in effect, invent new colloquialisms and they are just as right (just as spanish/english/whatever) as colloquialisms invented by native speakers. Obviously, my goal is to be understood. Sometimes you have to be inventive with a language to get your point across. I know a girl from India who makes up crap in English all the time. Quite often, I stare at her for half a minute, trying to figure out what she meant. Being inventive with a language isn't always successful for good communication. But she is still speaking English, even though it doesn't work that great, and English is not her first language (at least, US english isn't. People speak English in India, but I'm not sure how that works....).

So, the language isn't only mine. I meant, when I said that it's mine, that it's mine too. It's not someone else's that I'm borrowing. It's... everyone's. This applies to American Sign Language, too. People in the ASL community piss me off when they try to force me to follow their silly little rules. I just want to use the language! Sheesh.

[Moo]

stuff

Fair enough. But as (a) someone for whom English is a second language and (b) someone trying to teach my English husband a new language, I wonder if you realise just how huge a part of a language is made up by those evolved/coloquial rules you shun. The language isn't just the words published in the dictionary and the rules on grammar, it is just as much the way it has evolved in the minds and memories of the majority of people who speak it. I think you do not distinguish between an academic language and a spoken language.

Traffic lights in South Africa are called "robots". Turn left at the next set of robots. Grammatically correct but what is the point of directing someone thus in England when they don't know what you mean and are going to get lost? If you do insist on doing this sort of thing, you do make the language your own and yours alone, setting yourself apart from the other speakers through, forgive me, stubborness (if that's not a proper word blame it on my being a foreigner ). This is different though from making up new ways of expressing yourself when there is no equivalent expression in English, like your friend does and what I do a lot - but within the constraints of what I know people I'm talking to can relate to having thought about it for a few seconds.

**Warning. Off-topic rant detected in this post. Danger of going off on a tangent. Warning.**
EDIT: Oooh how I hated having to just type "color". It's spelled "colour"! But I have to use the former or php won't know what I mean

[Rilian]

I wouldn't continue to use a phrase that I came up with if no one knew what I meant. What I'm saying is that I have just as much a right to be inventive in spanish and german as native speakers do. And even if I were to say something that doesn't follow grammar rules, if it's comprehensible, it's right, and it's OK.

[Moo]

I wouldn't continue to use a phrase that I came up with if no one knew what I meant. What I'm saying is that I have just as much a right to be inventive in spanish and german as native speakers do. And even if I were to say something that doesn't follow grammar rules, if it's comprehensible, it's right, and it's OK.

Argument accepted.

[LarrySDonald]

It would seem to me most ambiguities have no purpose at all and mostly get in the way. I've only tried a tiny bit of lojban and a tiny bit more esperanto, but they seem like good ideas. It does nothing, at least in principle, to ideas. No language will be complete and I'm sure if it was the standard it would corrupt (as I'm likely doing now to English), but that doesn't bar trying.

It seems like a very good idea to have a language where the idea can be transmitted as cleanly and completely as possible. Sometimes things have to be made more ambiguous in exchange for space - as the example before if a building is on fire you don't really have time to explain the details and you don't have to. In my utopia, a language has every level included. Fire. Building(onfire). Building(over_there(onfire)). Dueto(neglecting(electrical_system,years(2)),Building(over_there(onfire))). Provide as little or much, but whatever, out of everything, is the idea behind it it's good to get it down solid what it is that's being said. No one (much) is trying to inhibit ideas/information, only both expand and further hone the protocol over which they have to be transmitted.

I'm no linguist though and shamefully can at most claim fluency in Swedish and English, perhaps communicate barely understandably in Spanish and grasp a few words in Japanese, Russian and the two aforementioned languages. I'm not what people would call good at languages despite having a fit of thinking about them now and again. Humans are tricky and like things to "sound right" but I still think it's a very worthy effort to try to have something set up that will, in as far as possible, transmit ideas from person to person. If nothing else, it could be read through a machine translator in any non-intentionally-constructed language with no more harm then added ambiguity as opposed to natural to natural translation which introduces the question of what the original speaker/writer meant.

[teucer]

I'm always annoyed, when learning another language, when someone (usually a professor) tells me, "yes, that's grammatically correct... but they just don't say it that way!" and they mean that if I say it that way, I'll be "wrong". They want me to learn and mimic the 'spanish' that is already spoken by other people. They don't want me to assimilate spanish as my language. They want me to think and behave as if spanish were someone else's language that I have no right to 'alter'. But it's not. Any language I speak, to any extent, is mine.

To me that bespeaks an insufficient understanding of the grammatical rules of the language.

The actual rules which govern what people do and don't say in English have almost nothing to do with the rules you were taught in grade school, and aren't fully known - but, to the extent that they exist within the minds of all native speakers, they are really there. You don't say "the blue big house", ever - not because it's against one of the formal rules you learned in third grade - which it isn't - but because it's ungrammatical. If you're a native English speaker, you know that it's wrong, without reference to any grammar books.

Spanish is the same way, I'm sure, as is any other language. When native speakers (or fluent non-native speakers) tell you you'd be wrong to say something a certain way, but it doesn't break the rules, they mean it doesn't break the rules they know consciously, but they've absorbed the language well enough that their intuitive sense of the real rules tells them it wouldn't be correct.

[Rilian]

To me that bespeaks an insufficient understanding of the grammatical rules of the language.

LOL. I study grammar crazily.

Languages change.