

Lojban - The Logical Language - gnosis
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban%20Introductory%20Brochure#intro

======
ColinWright
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.

~~~
gnosis
_"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.

~~~
ColinWright
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.

~~~
fsiefken
Have you read Ben Goertzel's Loglish idea to combine the Lojban grammar with
the English vocabulary? This could address the issue of adoption.
<http://www.goertzel.org/new_research/Loglish.htm>
<http://www.goertzel.org/papers/lojbanplusplus.pdf>

~~~
majmun
this is good idea. i wonder if there is such adapted texts for other
languages. it sure would make learning experience better.

------
tokenadult
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>

------
DanielStraight
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.

~~~
andrewflnr
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.

~~~
gnosis
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.

~~~
ColinWright
Esperanto is so similar to any other romance language it's almost trivial to
pick up. I can decode a page of it fairly easily. Klingon had a huge body of
enthusiasts.

Lojban has no entry level material that is actually engaging. We need a large
number of articles about interesting things, but written at the language level
of a four year old. With nothing interesting to read, and no other reason to
learn other than "it's interesting" it's having a hard time growing.

It needs entry level interesting material.

~~~
WildUtah
Yeah, agreed.

In fact, the strongest headwind Esperanto constantly faces is Spanish. There's
already a romance language with absolutely systematic spelling, easy
pronunciation, simple grammar, and few irregularities. It's already the second
most widely spoken language on the planet, it has mountains of interesting and
elementary material, and there are lots of interesting people whom you can
meet only by speaking it.

It's hard for any rationalized romance language to gain traction against that.

------
sanxiyn
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.

------
andrewflnr
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...](http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter2.html)

------
loup-vaillant
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.

------
Newky
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.

~~~
gnosis
#lojban on freenode

------
joeburke
"How to learn Lojban

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

Yup. That's gonna work.

~~~
Ruudjah
It gets better:

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

Seriously. A Book.

~~~
anon_c
Available online.

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

