"Donald J. HARLOW" <donh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>angell.jared@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
skribis:
>> I'm interest in learning a language as near to perfect as possible and
>> from what I've been reading that is either Ido or Lojban. But I
>> cannot find enough information about Ido to be sure if Lojban is
>> better, which it seems it might be. It also seems like it would feel
>> less human. Can anyone help me with this so I don't have to try to
>> learn both???
>>
>Before giving a definitive answer to the question, I'd have to ask:
>what's your motivation in wanting to learn a planned language?
>
>If what you're looking for is intellectual exercise, I'd have no qualms
>about recommending Lojban, though you might first want to read the
>exchange between me (an Esperanto speaker) and Lojbanist Matt Arnold
>posted at
>
>http://www.harlows.org/don/opinions/archives/000359.php
To correct you on one key fact, Don:
<I knew -- from an earlier comment by Bob LeChevalier in another venue
< -- that Nick Nicholas was capable of speaking Lojban fluently, at
< least under certain conditions; but to say that he had no more
< advantages than I had is perhaps not quite correct. I started
< learning Esperanto about the same time I started learning Latin in
< high school, so I had no prior linguistic training; Nick, on the
< other hand, was, as far as I know, a professional
< (university-teaching-level) linguist at the time he learned Lojban,
< as well as being familiar with several other planned languages.
When Nick learned Lojban he was a high school student (and one of the
leaders of the Australian Esperanto Youth Group). He had no linguistic
training and his knowledge of other planned languages had built off
his Esperanto experiences. He went to college as an EE major, and
switched to linguistics as a result of studying Lojban, which had
raised numerous interesting questions in his mind. He did eventually
get his PhD in Linguistics, but that was something like 10 years after
he first heard of Lojban, and well after he had demonstrated fluency
in the language. Most of his professional linguistics work since then
was corpus analysis of early Greek.
We have since had a couple other high school students demonstrate
fluency or near-fluency in speech.
lojbab
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