'Lojban' (
IPA ) is a
constructed human language based on
predicate logic.
It started to be developed in 1987 by The Logical Language Group (LLG) intending to realize
Loglan's purposes as well as to further complement the language to be more usable and freely available (as indicated by its official full English name "Lojban: a realization of Loglan"). After a long initial period of debating and testing, its baseline completed by 1998 with the publication of ''The Complete Lojban Language''.
The name "Lojban" is a combination of ''loj'' and ''ban'', which are the short forms of ''logji'' (logic) and ''bangu'' (language) respectively. Due to its name, Lojban is sometimes misunderstood to be within some exclusive domains such as formal logic or computer programming, while it is perfectly human usable in daily conversation. While it is meant to be capable of handling highly logical concepts, it is also highly flexible to an unparalleled degree. To whatever degree the speaker wishes, it can resemble its natural, programming, or other constructed counterparts, and it can be poetic, ambiguous, precise, or neutral.
The principal sources of its basic vocabulary was the (at the time) six most widely-spoken languages:
Arabic,
Chinese,
English,
Hindi,
Russian, and
Spanish, in order to reduce the unfamiliarity or strangeness of the root words to people of diverse linguistic backgrounds. Some Lojbanists acknowledge that the language has drawn on other constructed languages' components, a notable instance of which is
Láadan's set of indicators. Also
Toki Pona and
Esperanto have mutuality with Lojban to some extent.
In this article, explanations of its grammatical aspects will mostly be based on ''The Complete Lojban Language'', and as for the orthography the Latin alphabet mode will be used.
History
Origin (1955-1987)
Lojban has a predecessor,
Loglan, a language invented by
James Cooke Brown in
1955 and developed by
The Loglan Institute. Loglan was originally conceived as a means to examine the influence of language on the speaker's thought (an assumption known as
Sapir Whorf hypothesis).
As Brown started to claim
copyright on the language's components, restraint was laid on the community's activity. In order to circumvent such control, a group of people decided to initiate a separate project, departing from the lexical basis of Loglan and reinventing the whole vocabulary, which led to the current lexicon of Lojban. In effect they established in
1987 The Logical Language Group, based in
Washington DC. They also won a trial over whether they could call their version of the language "Loglan".
[1]
Initial development (1987-1997)
The "freeze" period (1997-2002)
Following the publication of ''The Complete Lojban Language'', it was expected that "the documented lexicon would be baselined, and the combination of lexicon and reference grammar would be frozen for a minimum of 5 years while language usage grew"
[2]. As scheduled, this period, which has officially been called the "freeze", expired in 2002. The speakers of Lojban are now free to construct new words and idioms, and decide where the language is heading.
Post-foundation (2002-)
Lojban still shares many of the characteristics of Loglan:
★ Has a grammar that is based on
predicate logic, designed to express complex logical constructs precisely.
★ Has no irregularities or ambiguities in spelling and grammar (although word derivation relies on arbitrary variant forms). This gives rise to high intelligibility for
computer parsing.
★ Is designed to be as
culturally neutral as possible.
★ Allows highly
systematic learning and use, compared to most natural languages.
★ Possesses an intricate system of indicator which effectively communicate contextual
attitudes or
emotions.
★ Does not have
simplicity as a design criterion.
Literature and vocabulary development
Lojban is considered to be an advantageous intellectual device for
creative writing and is deemed to have many potential aspects yet to be discovered or explored.
See also
the proposed fourth tense of Lojban discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as
ZAhO tenses, the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them (the concepts) "have no exact English counterpart".
Like most languages with few speakers, Lojban lacks much of an associated body of
literature and its creative extensions have not been fully realized (the true potential of its attitudinal system, for example, is considered to unlikely be drawn out "until and unless we have children raised entirely in a multi-cultural Lojban-speaking environment"
[3]). Also such collective or encyclopedic sources of knowledge like the Lojban wikipedia, which may help expand the language's lexical horizon, are in need of growth.
Presently accessible Lojbanic writings are principally concentrated on the Lojban.org, though there exist independent Lojbanic blog/journal sites as well. The Lojban IRC (or its archive) has a gathering of Lojbanic expressions too, but its grammatical correctness is not always guaranteed. These available materials on the internet include both original works and translations of classic pieces in the field of natural languages, ranging from
poetry,
short story,
novel, and
academic writing. This has been paralleled with a
chrestomathy project aiming to produce a collection of translated writings in order to show wide samplings of various language, hopefully longer than 10000 words and with a variety of genres and styles
[4] (''see also - External link: Literature''). Exemplary works that are already available include:
★ ''Alice in Wonderland'' by the English-Irish author
Lewis Carroll
★ ''One Thousand Nights and a Night'' (a classic
Arabic tale)
★ ''The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'' (Chapter 1) by the science fiction writer
Robert A. Heinlein
★ ''The Prophet'' by the Lebanese-American writer
Kahlil Gibran
★ ''The Little Things'' by the short story writer/poet
Raymond Carver
★ ''The Man and the Snake'' by the short story writer/satirist
Ambrose Bierce
★ ''The Book'' by the cosmic horror writer
H. P. Lovecraft
★ ''The Legend of Zelda'' (a classic
NES fantasy game) by
Nintendo
Other translation projects include:
★ Eaton Interface: a translation of the Helen Eaton concept list into Lojban.
★ Parliamentary Rules: Lojban terms for
parliamentary actions.
★ Lojban Adventure: a Lojban version of the classic
Colossal Cave text adventure game.
Compound words (lujvo) and borrowed words (fu'ivla) are continuingly increasing as the speakers find demands. The number of root words (gismu) and structure words (cmavo) are basically unchanging, but new inventions are to be accepted as experimental components. In fact, it has been noticed that particular inclination or disproportion exists in the available vocabulary. Cortesi
[5] have pointed out the lack of certain terms for mathematics and geometry (although this demand may now be disputed as the current set of Lojban vocabulary do actually allow the speakers to express such notions as steradian (stero), trigonometric tangent (tanjo), multiplicative inverse (fa'i), matrix transpose (re'a) among a number of other kinds of operators or metric units). Other instances which necessitate the speakers to construct noncanonical words:
★ There are few (almost non-existent) entries of African country names on the official list of root words while the other country names (especially those with large populations of speakers of the six source languages) are covered to a remarkable extent.
★ Such distinction as between ''palne'' (tray) and ''palta'' (plate) or such peculiar kind of terms as ''nilda'ibandu'' ("armor class", used in role playing games) exist while no distinction between "illustration" and "photography" is made by the available set of gismu (that is, no exclusive root word for "photography" exist but the generic ''pixra'') (''see also - Grammar: Morphology: brivla: gismu'').
Learning aids development
Apart from the actual practice of the language, some members of the community and LLG have been endeavoring to create various aids for the learners. ''The Complete Lojban Language'', the definitive word on all aspects of Lojban, is one of them, finalized in 1997. Some of the projects in varying stages of completeness are:
★ Phrasebook: Lojbanic Phrasebook Project, CVS/Wiki Lojban Phrasebook, Pocket Dictionary
★ Parser: Lojban Parser/Machine Grammar (by Robin Lee Powell), jbofi'e (by Richard Curnow), valfendi (by Pierre Abbat)
★ Database: jbovlaste (by Robin Lee Powell), Reference Database (by Matt Arnold on DabbleDB)
★ Others: Lojban/Logic book and webpage (by John Clifford), TLI Loglan Interface (by Steven Belknap and Bob LeChevalier)
:(''see also - External link: Learning Courses/Resources'')
A dedicated Lojban popup dictionary as a
Firefox add-on has been suggested, but is still in the level of speculation as the present lexing and parsing system of Lojban does not cover
JavaScript.
Community development
Currently, Lojban's learning resources available on the internet cover mainly those speakers of English, French, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and Esperanto, to varying degrees
[6][7].
Disproportion in the community population is still noticeable. It is reasonably hoped among Lojbanists that more people from different cultural/linguistic backgrounds join the community in order to maintain and further complement the intended neutrality of the language. (''see also - Community'')
Future goals
While the initial aim of the Loglan project was to investigate the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the active Lojban community recognizes additional goals for the language to be attained in the future, including:
★ General research into
linguistics
★ Research in
artificial intelligence and machine understanding
★ Improved human-computer communication,
storage ontologies, and
computer translation of natural language text
★ Use of language as an
educational tool
Grammar
Phonology
Lojban has 6
vowels and 21
consonants. Some of them have, apart from the preferred/standard sounds, permitted variants intended to cover dissimilitude in pronunciation by speakers of different linguistic backgrounds.
There are also 16
diphthongs (and no
Triphthongs). Distinction between diphthongs and monophthongs can be made by inserting a comma in the Latin alphabet mode.
The sounds may be
allophoned.
For those who, given their native language background, may have trouble pronouncing (certain)
consonant clusters, there is the option of inserting buffer vowels between them, as long as they differ sufficiently from the phonological vowels and are pronounced as short as possible. The resulting added syllables are completely ignored by the grammar, including for the purposes of stress determination.
Orthography
Lojban may be written in different orthography systems as long as it meets the required regularities and unambiguities. Some of the reasons for such elasticity would be as follows:
# Lojban is rather defined by the
phonemes (spoken form of words), therefore, as long as they are correctly rendered so as to maintain the Lojbanic
audio-visual isomorphism, a representational system can be said to be an appropriate orthography of the language;
# Lojban is meant to be as culturally neutral as possible, so it is never crucial or fundamental to claim that some particular orthography of some particular languages (e.g. the Latin alphabet) should be the dominant mode.
Some Lojbanist extends this principle so as to claim that even an original orthography of the language is to be sought
[8].
This article will use the common Latin alphabet mode.
Morphology
Lojban has 3
word-classes: predicate words, structure words, and name words. Each of them has uniquely identifying properties, so that one can unambiguously recognize which word is of which part of speech in a string of the language. They may be further divided in sub-classes. There also exists a special fragmental form assigned to some of the words, from which longer words can be compounded.
[9][10]
Syntax and semantics
According to ''What Is Lojban?''
[11], the language's grammatical structures are "defined by a set of rules that have been tested to be unambiguous using computers", which is in effect called the "machine grammar". Hence the characteristics of the standard syntactic (not semantic) constructs in Lojban:
★ each word has exactly one grammatical interpretation;
★ the words relate grammatically to each other in exactly one way.
Such standards, however, are to be attained with certain carefulness:
The computer-tested, unambiguous rules also include grammar for 'incomplete' sentences e.g. for narrative, quotational, or mathematical phrases.
Lojbanic expressions are modular; smaller constructs of words are assembled into larger phrases so that all incorporating pieces manifest as a possible grammatical unity. This mechanism allows for simple yet infinitely powerful phrasings; "a more complex phrase can be placed inside a simple structure, which in turn can be used in another instance of the complex phrase structure".
Its
typology can be said to be basically
Subject Verb Object and
Subject Object Verb. However, it can practically be anything:
★ ''mi prami do'' (SVO)
★ ''mi do prami'' (SOV)
★ ''do se prami mi'' (OVS)
★ ''do mi se prami'' (OSV)
★ ''prami fa mi do'' (VSO)
★ ''prami do fa mi'' (VOS)
Such flexibility has to do with the language's intended capability to translate as many expressions of natural languages as possible, based on a unique positional case system. The meaning of the sentence {mi prami do} is determined by {prami} realizing, with its own predefined "place structure", a specific semantic relation between {mi} and {do}; when the positional relation between {mi} and {do} changes, the meaning of the sentence changes too. As shown above, Lojban has particular devices to preserve such semantic structure of words while altering their order.
As benefits to a logical language, there is a large assortment of logical connectives. Such conjunction words take different forms depending on what they connect, another reason why the (standard) Lojbanic expressions are typically precise and clear.
Multiple predicate words may be linked up together so as to narrow the semantic scope of the phrase. In ''skami pilno'' "computer user(s)", the modifying word ''skami'' narrows the sense of the modified word ''pilno'' to form a more specific concept (in which case the modifier may resemble English adverbs or adjectives).
Samples
Common expressions
| Lojban | literal meaning | English |
|---|
| coi/co'o | [greetings!]/[farewell!] | hello/good-bye |
| pe'u | [please!] | please |
| ki'e | [thankful!] | thank you |
| .u'u | [pity!] | I'm sorry |
| xu do se glibau/jbobau | [true-false?] you is-a-speaker-of-English/Lojban-language | Do you speak English/Lojban? |
| ti/ta | that-here/that-there | this one/that one |
| mi na jimpe | I [false] understand | I don't understand |
| go'i | the-last-bridi | yes/thats' true |
| na go'i | [false] the-last-bridi | no/that's false |
| la'u ma | being-a-quantity-of what | how much/many? |
| ma jdima | what is-the-price-of | what's the cost? |
| ma stuzi lo vimku'a | what is-an-inherent-site-of that-which-is toilet | Where's the toilet? |
Some unique Lojbanic expressions
★ ''pei .o'ucu'i''
[?] [relaxation!] [neutral]
Are you no longer in pain?
★ ''mi nelci ko''
I is-fond-of you-[imperative]
Make me be fond of you!
★ ''le cukta be'u cu zvati ma''
that-which-is-described-as book [need!] is-at what
Where's the book? I need it!
★ ''ko ga'inai nenri klama le mi zdani''
you-[imperative] [me-the-social-inferior!] inside-type-of come that-which-is-described-as having-to-do-with-me house
I would be honored if you would enter my residence.
★ ''le nanmu cu ninmu''
one-or-more-specific-things-which-I-describe as "men" are women
The man is/are a woman/women.
★ ''seri'agi mi jgari lei djacu gi mi jgari le kabri''
With-physical-effect I grasp the-mass-of water, I grasp the cup.
★ Therefore I grasp the water, I grasp the cup.
Tongue Twisters
★ lo'u lu le la li'u le'u
★ le crisa srasu cu rirci crino
★ tisna fa la tsani le cnita tsina lo tinci tinsa
★ la bab. zbasu loi bakyzbabu loi bakygrasu
★ mi na djuno le du'u klama fa makau la makaus. makau makau makau
Others
★ '' (a Lojbanic poem)
★ ''
The Lord's Prayer''
Community
The Internet
The activities of Lojban speakers are mostly via the
Internet:
★
Lojban.org: A user-maintained site, attempting to reflect a cross section of the Lojban community outside of the LLG.
★ Lojban IRC (irc.freenode.net #lojban): Based on the Freenode IRC network. One may use a web interface as an alternative to IRC clients.
★
Lojban Mailing List: A beginner-oriented means to talk/learn about the language.
★
jbovlaste: An official, dictionary editing interface created by Jay Kominek, updated by Robin Lee Powell. People can post new Lojbanic words with definitions and examples, or vote for such experimental words.
★
jbobac: A web-based forum that has posts/threads made up mainly of sound files.
★ samxarmuj/The Lojban Moo: A multi user virtual environment, similar to the old text adventure games. A guide is given
here.
★
le jbopre pe lj's Journal: A communal Lojban blog.
★
lojban-valsi: A-word-a-day mailing list on the Yahoo! Groups.
★ : The Lojban Wikipedia, where discussions may be conversed in English.
The Logfest
Gatherings of Lojbanists have been organized in USA annually since as early as 1990, called Logfest. It is mostly informal, taking place in weekend, with the only scheduled activity being the annual meeting of the LLG. Those who cannot be present may still be involved via IRC. Activity may be whatever the people who attend want to do: Lojban conversation, lessons, technical discussions, or socializing.
Population
The number of Lojban speakers in total is unknown.
According to Lojban.org
[12], places known to have concentration of Lojbanists are:
★ Australia, Israel, United States
Also Frappr.com shows
[13] that, as of August 2007, some people from following countries are interested in or enthusiasts of the language:
★ Argentina, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela.
It is generally noticed that there is little participation from Hindi peoples, in spite of the etymological nature of Lojban vocabulary.
Below are some of the notable personalities who have contributed to the development of Lojban:
★ Bob LeChevalier (aka ''lojbab''): the president of the LLG.
★ John Cowan: the author of ''The Complete Lojban Language''.
★ Jorge Llambías (aka ''xorxes''): one of the most active Lojbanists, having done several translations. He is also a prominent figure on the mailing list, helping the beginners with the language.
★ Matt Arnold (aka ''epkat''): one of the most active Lojbanists. He has been contributing to the translation project and software development.
★ Nick Nicholas (aka ''nitcion''): an Australian linguist. He is the first fluent Lojban speaker (although he insists that he was the second, he is known to be excessively modest). He has done a lot of Lojbanic writing, including ''Lojban For Beginners'' coauthored by Robin Turner.
★ Robin Lee Powell (aka ''camgusmis''): the current webmaster of Lojban.org. He provides the machine and bandwidth from which the site is served. He has also written several Lojbanic materials including a novel-sized story.
★ Robin Turner: a British philosopher and linguist living in Turkey. He is the coauthor of ''Lojban For Beginners''.
Comparison with other constructed languages
Esperanto
The current number of Lojban speakers, although incalculable, does not likely equal to that of
Esperanto. However, the successfulness of Esperanto as a constructed language is by no means incomparable to that of Lojban. Esperanto's leading edges have been:
★ the larger community, more institutions, and more (alleged) native speakers;
★ the rich body of literature.
Some of the contrastive points between Esperanto and Lojban are as follows.
★ Esperanto words are mostly European-oriented. Lojban has a wider range of lexical etymologies.
★ Esperanto grammar is more apposite to usage by European people. Lojban syntax is capabe of dealing with expressions in various natural languages and is enough systematic/clear to be easily parsed by computers (i.e. it is either human- or machine-oriented).
★ Esperanto is often criticized for its sexism: the generic form of words is used for males while a derived form is used for females. Lojban morphology does not undergo any of such a prejudice: the marking of gender is always optional.
★ Typing Esperanto requires some special typesetting. Lojban can be typed by any ordinary computer keybords
Some of the similarities may be that both Esperanto and Lojban are difficult to achieve fluency. Aside from the purely technical linguistic aspects Esperanto and Lojban has different goals and differs greatly in which elements are considered most important. The differences in design clearly reflect this. Simplicity was a major issue for esperantos design, while it was not a goal when Lojban was designed.
The ex-Esperantist Lojbanist Nick Nicholas observes
[14]:
Loglan
Loglan is now a generic term that refers both to
James Cooke Brown's ''Loglan'', and all languages descended from it. Since the organization that Dr. Brown established, The Loglan Institute (TLI), still calls its language ''Loglan'', it is necessary to state that this section refers specifically to the TLI language, instead of the entire family of languages.
The principal difference between Lojban and Loglan is one of lexicon. A Washington DC splinter group, which later formed The Logical Language Group, LLG, decided in 1986 to remake the entire vocabulary of Loglan in order to evade Dr. Brown's claim of copyright to the language. After a lengthy battle in court, his claim to copyright was ruled invalid. But by then, the new vocabulary was already cemented as a part of the new language, which was called ''Lojban: A realization of Loglan'' by its supporters.
The closed set of five-letter words was the first part of the vocabulary to be remade. The words for Lojban were made by the same principles as those for Loglan; that is, candidate forms were chosen according to how many sounds they had in common with their equivalent in some of the most commonly spoken languages on Earth, which was then multiplied by the number of speakers of the languages with which the words had letters in common. The difference with the Lojban remake of the root words was that the weighting was updated to reflect more recent numbers of speakers for the languages. This resulted in word forms that had fewer sounds taken from English, and more sounds taken from Chinese. For instance, the Loglan word ''norma'' is equivalent to the Lojban word ''cnano'' (cf.
Chinese 常,
pinyin ''cháng''), both meaning "normal".
Grammatical words were gradually added to Lojban as the grammatical description of the language was made.
Loglan and Lojban still have essentially the same grammars, and most of what is said in the
Grammar section above holds true for Loglan as well. Most simple, declarative sentences could be translated word by
word between the two languages; but the grammars differ in the details, and in their formal foundations. The grammar of Lojban is defined mostly in the language definition formalism
YACC, with a few formal "pre-processing" rules. Loglan also has a machine grammar, but it is not definitive; it is based on a relatively small corpus of sentences that has remained unchanged through the decades, which takes precedence in case of a discrepancy.
There are also many differences in the terminology used in English to talk about the two languages. In his writings, Brown used many terms based on English, Latin and Greek, some of which were already established with a slightly different meaning. On the other hand, the Lojban camp freely borrowed grammatical terms from Lojban itself. For example, what linguists call ''roots'' or ''
root words'', Loglanists call ''primitives'' or ''prims'', and Lojbanists call ''gismu''. The ''lexeme'' of Loglan and ''selma'o'' of Lojban has nothing to do with the linguistic meaning of ''
lexeme''. It is a kind of
part of speech, a subdivision of the set of grammatical words, or particles, which loglanists call ''little words'' and lojbanists ''cmavo''. Loglan and Lojban have a grammatical construct called, ''metaphor'' and ''tanru'', respectively; this is not really a
metaphor, but a kind of modifier-modificand relationship, similar to that of a
noun adjunct and noun. A borrowed word in Loglan is simply called a ''borrowing''; but in English discussions of Lojban, the Lojban word ''fu'ivla'' is used. This is probably because in Lojban, unlike Loglan, a certain set of CV templates is reserved for borrowed words.
In the new phonology for Lojban, the consonant ''q'' and the vowel ''w'' were removed, and the consonant ''h'' was replaced by ''x''. The consonant ' (
apostrophe) was added with the value of [h] in the
International Phonetic Alphabet, but its distribution is such that it can appear only intervocally, and in discussions of the morphology and phonotactics, it is described not as a proper consonant, but a "voiceless glide". (This phoneme is realized as [θ] by some speakers.) A rigid
phonotactical system was made for Lojban, but Loglan does not seem to have had such a system.
Lojsk
Lojsk was conceived by Ari Reyes, heavily influenced by Loglan, Lojban, Universal Networking Language (UNL), Esperanto, Visual Basic, Dutton's Speedwords, Ceqli and Guaspi. It is designed to be more single-syllable oriented. If possible, that would nonetheless lead Lojsk to be even more sensitive to noisy environments than Lojban is, therefore its practicability in oral communication may be questioned.
Voksigid
Voksigid by Bruce R. Gilson attempts to construct a predicate language of a different type from those which had gone before. Its syntax was somewhat influenced by Japanese, and its vocabulary was based mostly on European language roots. Loglan and Lojban both uses word order to mark the various places in the predication, but because remembering which position means which role in the predication might be beyond easy memorization for most people, Voksigid was designed in order to overcome this issue.
Guaspi
Guaspi is a descendent of Lojban and Loglan which uses Chinese-like tones to mark grammatical structure, develop by Jim Carter. By using tones instead of structure words, and cutting predicates from two to one syllable, Carter has fixed a minor flaw in Guaspi's predecessors -- they take a lot of syllables to say things.
Trivia
★ Lojban is the first language in the world that used the Roman alphabet without mandatory capitalization of letters in formal writing; in fact, such capitalization is discouraged.
[15]
★ Lojban is the first language to survive a schism occurring before anyone spoke it
[16]
★ There are generational "classes" of Lojbanists: Old Growth, Sci-Fi (in the late 1980s, recruited through Sci-fi cons), Conlangers (in the early 1990s, recruited through constructed language afficionadodom), Geeks (always present, but somewhat more prominent in the late 1990s, recruited mostly through computer science interest), New Growth. Also those who took part in the solidification period (1991-97) are called "tweeners". For some, there exist only two groups: the revolutionaries and the new schoolers. The former are the Loglaners that split and created Lojban, and the latter are "gen-x geeks" that came in after the language was solidified.
[17]
★ "Lojbanana" is a term for a speaker or fan of Lojban, coined by Mark Shoulson
[18].
★ The Lojban logo is defined as a
Cartesian coordinate system superimposed on a
Venn diagram, as the result of a poll of the members of the LLG. This definition does not mention color, but it is traditionally reproduced with the coordinate system in red and the Venn diagram in blue. No official explanation of its symbolism exists, but one might reasonably suppose that each of its components stands for the language's two major characteristics: the coordinate system for "rationality" (analytical observation and representation of groups of things), and the Venn diagram for "universality" (all of the possible logical relationships between groups of things). For more details and alternate proposals, see
Lojban Logo.
★ The official LLG book ''The Complete Lojban Language'' is often referred to as ''The Big Red Book'' due to its appearance, or simply ''The Book''.
★ Beginners of Lojban often misproduce expressions in the language as they conceive of things from their own peculiar cultural point of view. For those idiomatic, biased Lojban expressions there are common terms, the English version of which is ''malglico'' (''mabla'' + ''glico''), meaning "damn English".
★ Something of the flavor of Lojban (and Loglan) can be imparted by this
lightbulb joke:
Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light bulb?
A: Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light.
:This joke makes use of two features of the language; first, the language attempts to eliminate
polysemy; that is, having a phrase with more than one meaning. So while the English word "change" can mean "to transform into a different state", or "to replace", or even "small-denomination currency", Lojban has different words for each. In particular, the use of a ''brivla'' such as the word for "change" ("binxo") implies that all of its predicate places exist, so there must be something for it to change into. Another feature of the language is that it has no grammatical ambiguities that appear in English phrases like "big dog house", which can mean either a big house for dogs or a house of big dogs. In Lojban, unless you clearly specify otherwise with ''cmavo'', such modifiers always group left-to-right, so "big dog house" is a house of big dogs, and a "broken light bulb" is a bulb that emits broken light (you can achieve the desired meaning with the appropriate ''cmavo'' or by creating a new word, in effect saying "broken lightbulb").
★ Lojban project started exactly 100 years after Esperanto was created (1887-1987).
Notes
1. Johansen, Arnt Richard. ''Why I like Lojban'' (accessed August 2007)
2. Lojban.org ''Official Baseline Statement''
3. Cowan, John. The Complete Lojban Language 13.16
4. Lojban.org Official LLG Projects: Chrestomathy (accessed August 2007)
5. Cortesi, David. Lack of Geometry
6. Lojban.org Official LLG Projects (accessed August 2007)
7. Lojban.org Word Lists (accessed August 2007)
8. Kena. ''Vodka-Pomme: Considerations on wrinting: The case of lojban'' (accessed August 2007)
9. Cowan, John Woldemar. ''The Complete Lojban Language: 4.1'' (accessed August 2007)
10. Nicholas, Nick, and John Cowan. ''What is Lojban?: 2.2'' (accessed August 2007)
11. Nicholas, Nick. John Cowan. ''What Is Lojban? II.3''
12. Lojban.org ''The Lojban Online Community''. 2005
13. Frappr.com ''Lojban'' (accessed August 2007)
14. Nicholas, Nick. ''Lojban and Esperanto''
15. [1] What Is Lojban?: .i la lojban. mo, Chapter 2. Overview of Lojban Grammar
16. LLG. ''ju'i lobypli #11''. March 1990
17. Lojban.org ''New Growth Lojbanist''
18. Lojban.org Lojbanana
References
★ Goertzel, Ben: Potential Computational Linguistics Resources for Lojban. Self-published, March 6, 2005.
[2]
★ Speer, Rob; Havasi, Catherine: Meeting the Computer Halfway: Language Processing in the Artificial Language Lojban. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004.
[3]
★
Lojban vs Loglan comparison
★
Lojban with attitude!
External links
General/Miscellaneous
★
Lojban.org
★
le jbopre pe lj's Journal
★
International Lojban Enthusiasts Society
★
LogFest Store: Lojbanic Goods available on cafepress.com
Personal blogs
★
lo cunso selpeisku
★
le karni be fi la camgusmis by Robin Lee Powell
★
C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E. by Matt Arnold (direct link to his Lojbanic contents)
Learning courses/resources
Beginner
★
coirodo (a course featuring a children's book)
★
Conversational Lojban
★
Lojban: A Logical Language by Robin Turner
★
What is Lojban? by John Cowan and Nick Nicholas
★
Lojban For Beginners by Robin Turner and Nick Nicholas
★
Everyday Lojban by Lojban.org
★
Lojban Introductory Lessons
★
jboski: an online Lojban-to-English translator by LLG
★
Parallel 2: a free program for parallel reading and listening, based on the
implicit learning approach
★
jMemorize:
★
Popup.app: a GNUstep based vocabulary learning tool that can use cmafi'e to extract the vocabulary from a given text.
★
Quizlet:
★
Lojbanic Number Trainer: a simple web tool
★
Software Assisted Learning: miscellaneous software listed on Lojban.org
Advanced
★
gimste: a full list of Lojban gismu
★
Diagrammed Summary of Lojban Grammar Forms with Example Sentences by LLG
★
The Lojban Reference Grammar by John Cowan
★
The Level 0 Booklet
★
Using UML to understand Lojban
★
jbovlaste: an official Lojban dictionary project
Literature
Poetry
★
xirli'u selsanga: a poem by Federico Garca Lorca, translated by xorxes
★
skanunydji: by Michael Helsem
★
sipna pemci: by Arnt Richard Johansen
Short stories, novellas, and novels
★
le pijyctu: ''The Prohet'' by Kahlil Gibran, translated by Matt Arnold
★
la .alis. cizra je cinri zukte vi le selmacygu'e: ''Alice's Adventures In Wonderland'' by Lewis Carroll, translated mostly by xorxes (Jorge Llambías)
★
tu'a loi cmalu: ''The Little Things'' by Raymond Carver, translated by Jordan DeLong
★
le nanmu kujo'u le since: ''The Man and the Snake'' by Ambrose Bierce, translated by Jordan DeLong
★
tu'a le cukta: ''The Book'' by H. P. Lovecraft, translated by Michael Helsem
★
na tanxe: ''Not a Box'' by Anotinette Portis, translated by Michael Turniansky
★
la nicte cadzu: by camgusmis (Robin Lee Powell)
★
ko'a marji lo rectu: by Terry Bisson
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