Re: Lojban

In article <110920071719452157%anyone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Anonymous  <anyone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article <s6tde3l5p3rttng62778q5mb3ag3urnno2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Bob
> LeChevalier <lojbab@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> > Lojban IS simple compared to natural languages, and it IS easy to
> > learn.
> 
> Lojban has been around for a while now and the number of people who can
> actually use it seems rather small. (granted, the same is true of many
> conlangs) This either means that it is hard to learn or very few people
> see any reason to learn it. The long debates in lojban forums about how
> to express various concepts, and the fact that many users rely on
> computer software to check the correctness of their "utterances" would
> seem to indicate that lojban is difficult in some ways.

I think Bob is trying to say that Lojban doesn't *try* to be just
another people language, with different grammar and vocabulary and
spelling; the whole point is somewhat different than other conlangs.
And so obviously it's harder for people to get their minds around a
different way of thinking, even if its grammar and vocabulary are
simpler.

On the random guess that there are many programmers in this group, a
programming analogy would be Lisp versus most other computer languages.
For most languages, a useful syntax question is, "How do you return a
value from a function?"  To a Lisp programmer, that question is almost
meaningless: *everything* returns a value!  (And yes, programmers
accustomed to other languages tend to have some trouble getting used to
the Lisp way of thinking.)

> > In Lojban, polysemy is not considered a good thing.
> 
> But allomorphy is considered wonderful.
> 
> -- 
> -30-

Thanks --

David

(Remove "xx" to reply.)