le jbopre pe lj's Journal

9:14PM - 2 Small Questions

First, how does one create an account for and log into [la jbotcan]?

Second, I was just wondering how to say the equivalent of English "in order to..." or French "por..." in Lojban.  Would one insert something like a sumti tcita into the bridi, and/or could one fill in a "under conditions..." slot?  If there was no such a slot already present in the bridi, what sumti tcita would be inserted for this reason?

7:40AM - Experiences/anecdotes of casual Lojban learners

A handful of my friends (some of which are Ivy League-level, some of which are average and some inbetween) got together on a weekly basis to try to learn Lojban. This failed, and I've noticed that the people who -do- learn Lojban tend to have very high levels of natural intelligence, to the point that they need to hear a concept once without elaboration and can cement that concept from there onward. Reading Lojban For Beginners (which really should be titled "Accelerated Lojban") felt that way--it was like reading a math textbook, because every concept would be stated maybe once or twice, sometimes awkwardly or (ironically) unclearly, and then left behind.

The pronunciation was extremely easy and many concepts made sense. However, even when we got to the 6th chapter it was still impossible to form basic sentences beyond "mi'e .persyn." In most languages, I can memorize vocabulary and fill in the grammatical blanks later... but in Lojban that's impossible. I have to learn the grammar before I learn the vocabulary. Whenever I've looked for Lojban flashcards, they seem to work like this: "x1 is x2 at x3" or something similar.

Additionally, having vocabulary made up from the vocabulary of other words seems like it would be a good idea, but in practice I'm not sure if having "prenu" as a combination of "person" and "ren" helped, -especially- not in the same way that interlingua's/Esperanto's/other European-biased loanwords help. I'm not sure what you can do to improve on this situation, however, and I'm sure you've debated the pros/cons of this vigorously. The vocabulary isn't nearly as much of an issue as the grammar.

And, yeah, back to the grammar. I found it extremely hard to discuss or explain concepts to other Lojban-learners, especially when the book will basically follow this format: "Okay, this is the [x]. For the logicians in the audience, you can basically consider this [y]. For the mathematicians in the audience, you can think of this as [z]." I think constructed languages are an inherently geeky thing to begin with, but those types of explanations struck me as totally out of touch with what constitutes a "beginner".

When we came across concepts that ended up being obstacles, it reminded me of learning math at a higher level, with little help. The concepts are explained in very few sources (I had to look up words like "selbri" and "sumti" on the Lojban wiki because the Lojban For Beginners definition was so unclear), this site is incredibly convoluted and impossible for the uninitiated to navigate (forget asking questions--none of the people in my circle have used a mailing list besides me), and we couldn't speak Lojban outside of our circle because everyone on this site seems to have picked the language up at rapid pace. I think the primary issue here is that most people who have learned Lojban so far at least seem to be extremely intelligent compared to the average person that may learn a language and so it's just expected that lots of things are absorbed at rapid pace (compared to how quickly the average college student absorbs them) and/or understood intuitively.

Finally, I'd like to say something about Lojban as an IAL. From what I know of the language so far, it looks like it would be the ideal IAL by a large margin, but the main issues I see facing it are its complexity and inaccessibility. I've read several discussions about this, and from what I understand Lojbanists usually excuse its complexity at the expense of giving IAL-status a second priority. I think that it's -much- better than Interlingua or Esperanto in that regard, which to me seem like "General European" languages; a somewhat questionable goal, because so many people in Europe speak common languages anyway. Lojban has the advantage of being an inherently better language--if its ease of learning was significant enough that it was comparable or better to a non-European student learning Interlingua or Esperanto, I think it would be a serious contender for the IAL.

(mungojelly)

4:54AM - lo velsku remei

Two new Lojbanic forums you might be interested in:

An anonymous picture board. 100% Lojban, very cool vibe, no registration required. You should at least come look at the pictures.

la canre tanxe, the Sand Box, a google group I made so that I could have a Lojbanic forum where I felt like I could say whatever I wanted. Anyone's welcome to say anything.

mu'o mi'e la bret.

(neoanjou)

5:36PM - Webcomic translation from a newbie

Hi, (or should that be coi?)

I've only recently started to read about lojban [although for a good while I've been calling it lobjan!] and the idea of the language intrigues me quite a lot - I like the idea of how the structure of words seems very much akin to the invocation of sub-programs in the language (IDL) I use to program day-to-day.

Anyway - in the manner of language beginners everywhere I've decided to undertake an ambitious project as my first translation attempt - 'Darths and Droids', a Star Wars parody webcomic. The first episode has already been translated into German, Greek, Spanish, French, Italian, Hebrew, Dutch, Norweigan, Russian, Sweedish, Klingon, oh - and the Pirate dialect of English.

Would people mind if I posted my efforts and questions here? I'm likely to make a hell of a lot of mistakes to begin with, but hopefuly I'll pick up the basics relatively quickly - it all seems logical enough ;).

Anyway - assuming your approval - here is my attempt at the first sentence of speech (I'll attempt more in later posts, but I didn't want to be scary to begin with) - I've used the word lists available on the lobjan.org website, the list of everyday Lojban (here) and the very good Lojban for beginners lessons.

GM: Right. Everyone listening? Here's the campaign intro.
je'e .i be'e rodo .i ti prosa le co'a clali'u

Here I've coined the term clali'u (long-travel) to mean 'campaign' - this is based on the word jdali'u (religion-travel) to mean something approximating 'mission', used on the everyday lojban page.

My understand of what I have written would be something along the lines of:
je'e - 'roger' - apparently this would be used in the context of 'right' or 'uh-huh'.
be'e - 'request to send a message' - I spent ages trying to find a verb for 'listen', but I think that was just viewing through English eyes. This seems to convey the meaning, but I'm not sure whether one would say it in the middle of a block of speech.
rodo - 'everyone' - I'm not sure if this is welded to the previous, i.e. whether I am actually saying 'I request to send a message to everyone' or just 'request to send a message... everyone...'
ti prosa le co'a clali'u - 'this prose [is about] the starting of [the] campaign'. I'm particularly worried about my use of 'this' here.

Anyway - sorry for using this community as a free source of tuition.

Neil.

EDITED because my HTML links got screwed up.

(mungojelly)

4:48PM - lo milxe se fanva

coi doi jbopre
hello to lojban-people

.i le dei velsku cu se pilno bau
& this this-sentence-related forum is gets used in-language

da'i la gliban. po'o .eipei
hypothetically the English-Language only (should be?)

ji da'i la lojban. ji'a .eipei
and?-or?-neither? hypothetically the Lojban also (should be?)

.i ko jinvi fi la'e di'u pe'u
& you-imperative opine about referent-of last-sentence please

.i so'a jbopre poi tcidu cu na certu le nu lojbo tavla
& almost-all lojban-people who read are not expert-at an event Lojbanic talking

.i pe'i mu'i la'e di'u fanva .iepei
& i-think motivated-by referent-of last-sentence translate -- don't-you-agree?

.i mi milxe po'o fanva mu'i lo nu ctuca zo'o
& i mildly (only) translate motivated-by an event teaching ;)

mu'o mi'e la bret.

9:26AM - 10 suggestions for the changes to the website

I read earlier that part of the reason the website hasn't changed is because no one has proposed any alternatives. I signed up for this group to do just that, but be warned: this will likely be an opinionated post and because (from what I understand) Lojban's website has operated in mostly the same fashion since the early 1990s this may seem a bit radical and/or rude, but I assure you that is not the case.

1) The most immediate thing I notice are the three superfluous search bars on the top left. Yes, Lojban is a wiki, but Lojban is also an informative website representative of the LLG and the language as a whole. The wiki features should be off in a separate section of the site making themselves less apparent, because most of your views are from people who have no clue what Lojban is and no less than one minute's reading time to find out.

2) Main Menu: There's no reason why you need every drop down option exposed like that, but, more importantly, every menu item should be central and preferably on the top. Take this for example:



Every menu is a simple, clean button that makes for easy access. You can still keep everything, but you need to prioritize the information. Stuff like links to a Lojban song should be *very* deep into the page, whereas at the moment you have equal chance of stumbling across a Legend of Zelda translation of Lojban as you do the Lojban mailing list. Which brings me to another point:

3) Graphics. Not very complex ones, but still--the Lojban page is *very* uniform in its colors. Even reddit.com, in its text-based glory, uses colors to make its links stand out from one another, and digg.com does the same. You can use colors and icons to separate key categories visually. A great example is the main page of Lojban's very own Matt Arnold.

4) The news doesn't look like it's actually news. That is, there's no visual indication that brings the user to it saying "this is news", it's just text like any other text.

5) Speaking of text, Lojban's website text is very large. Verdana size 12 or Times New Roman size 12 are eclipsed by the behemoth that is the current font.

6) "What is Lojban?" on the main page, followed by information about the LLG. Nearly every website has a very distinct "About" button, but if you must explain the language upfront, take notes from ubuntu and try not to go too deep into explaining what Lojban is on the page people immediately see. Save that for an in-depth page.

7) Livejournal and forum/mailing list meshed on the main page. Currently, the displaying the Livejournal posts makes the page enormous, and displaying the mailing list as a forum tricks the first-time viewer into thinking there is virtually no forum activity despite that mailing lists behave very differently. I'd say get vBulletin, get a "shoutbox" plugin which serves as a chat (but don't display this on the main page), and a "top 10" plugin for the main page (but display the font in tinier text than the main font--if you use size 12, make it size 10 or less) and then be done with it.

8) I'm not sure who updates the site, but it really looks bad to have News that hasn't been updated since a year ago. Even if it's really minor news, it's still activity. This gives the impression to someone that has never seen the language before that it's an obscure language spoken by a small group of geeks (note: I don't mean this offensively, I consider myself a geek as well) in their basement, and however accurate that impression may be, that doesn't mean that's the impression you have to give. Lojban is useful for not only science, but for law, and the impression you should try to achieve to balance both of these is that of a company like Mozilla or Ubuntu, which is still undeniably geeky yet able to work with stuffy professionals if need be.

9) Make donation and the fact that you're a non-profit more obvious, and allow donations to be done by a method other than PayPal. I would donate to Lojban if it were more like the donation system on Barack Obama's website, where I don't need to go through the hassle of PayPal to donate.

10) Finally, don't use tiki for every page. Simple web pages, though less 'open', would be more appropriate. As it is, the current tiki makes pages that should be simple and informative very convoluted.

6:55PM - Another Few Questions

 Two sets of questions in two days, not bad (I believe).  Can someone help me out with the following:


1.  Is "and/or" a single word in Lojban?  I guess it would be more like "and/xor", really.

2.  Does "and/(x)or/any combination of the following with the previous"  exist as a (shorter) word/phrase on Lojban?  It would be used something like:  The ball can be red, polka dotted, and/(x)or/any combination of the following with the previous flat.  That would mean that the ball can be red or red and polka dotted, or red and flat, or red and flat but not polka dotted, etc.  As opposed to it is either red, polka dotted, and flat or none of the previous (for "and") or it can only be red, flat, or polka dotted but not multiple of those options.  I probably won't really understand Lojban conjunctions (connectives?), so go easy on me.  :)

3.  In English I see a slight need for two/more "and"'s.  If I said "Joe, Jack, and Jill and John and Jerry are going to the park" it sounds as if they are going as a group, even if it might mean the actions are done seperately.  Both are technically the same, but seem slightly different to me.  One could use commas, but that can be distracting and difficult to read.  I write using "et" for each sub-group.  So that it is "Joe, Jack, et Jill and John et Jerry are going to the park" or "JJJ are going as one group and JJ are going as another".  How would this be expressed in Lojban?

4.  In Lojban, is there a difference between "can" (to be physically able to) and "may" ("to be allowed to")?  I would not think so, one just fills in the last place for the word (I have a hard time with the terminology, would it be gismu?) that means, roughly, "to be able".  I am too lazy to find that word right now, but I know there is one.  What would happen if that last place was not filled in.  Obviously it is slight ambiguous, although I do not believe too many would object.  How would it be interpreted "can" or "may"?


Thanks again, and probably soon to be "like normal".

11:16AM - I Need Some Assistance [.a'ucai .a'ocai .u'ucai]

I have several questions conserning Lojban:


1)  I am havinga very hard time understanding [be], [bai] , and [be'o].  It seems to me that one could use [se] and its relatives.  Obviously, one cannot, but I do not understand for what reason that this is so.  My current line of thought is akin to:  That which I describe as a cat of species Felis silvestris catus [be], went to that described as a bar/pub, from here, and by method of transportation (the vehicle) which I shall describe as a car of the manufacturer/model Toyota [be].

2)  I do not understand why sometimes [cu] is left out before the selbri (I think that is the correct terminology).  I can understand it being ommitted after [cmene], but I hve seen examples just of [la feliks. (be cu^?) mlatu <u>_{[cu] ommitted}</u> klama le^? barja .i] but I think that means the thing "Feliks (is a) cat-goer-bar" or "Feliks (is a) cat-traveling-bar".

3)  I do not know if [campu] is a cmavo already, but if it is not would it be acceptable to have irregular stress on it ([campU]), in order to reflect natural pronunciation (shampoo)?  If it is acceptable and not already a cmene (would [campu] and [campU] be different?  I think so) I call that I have coined a new word: campU= substance/quantity X₁ is a shampoo/hair cleaner of composition X₂, distributed/produced by company/person/people X₃, that is used by person/thing X₄ on surface/object/animal/person X₅.  So, [Le campU fi la LORi,al. mi gerku pe mi] means "I am using shampoo, that was produced by L'Oreal, on my dog ."



Please forgive me for my ignorance, but I really like this language and only want to nderstand it. 

Thank you so graciously in advance.

9:54PM - Website update?

I've been lurking lojban.org for about a year and a half now. One thing that I've noticed from presenting Lojban to people is that the main page is severely lacking--the last update was 9 months ago, and the layout is convoluted. Additionally, most of the discussion is in a mailing list, which is a dated medium for that; a forum, such as vB or phpBB, would be much more efficient in creating discussion due to the ease of creating subforums and accounts. 

(matt_arnold)

12:50PM - Ease of Lojban

Here is the poll that was requested in the last entry.

Poll #1131353 Ease of Lojban
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Is it easy to learn Lojban?

Is it easy to use Lojban?

(s6)

8:24AM - Request for a community: social inverstigation on the easiness of use/learn

We are currently considering Lojban for the use in our artificial intelligence system for communication with humans and engineers. I'd like to do one social inverstigation. I'd like to ask some paid member of this community to post two polls:

Poll #1: Question: Is it easy to learn Lojban? Answers: Very Easy / Easy / Medium / Hard / Very Hard.

Poll #2: Question: Is it easy to use Lojban? Answers: Very Easy / Easy / Medium / Hard / Very Hard.

Could anyone post these polls?

(mungojelly)

4:36PM

Greetings Lojbanistan, and greetings especially to those of you who have an interest in Lojban but haven't had the time to devote to learning it. I hope you will be interested in the subset of Lojban which I have discovered/invented and named Cniglic. (cinmo+glico, emotional english). Cniglic consists of less than a hundred words selected from Lojban, mostly from selma'o UI-- the attitudinals. These words, such as ".ie" (I agree) and "zo'o" (just kidding) are so useful that they have long appeared occasionally in the dialect of English spoken in Lojbanistan. I am working on formalizing and promoting this hybrid dialect-- that is, Lojban's attitudinals applied to English text-- as both a stepping stone to learning Lojban and as a useful language in its own right.

It's my belief that there are far more people interested in Lojban than there have ever been active learners. This should hardly be any surprise, since learning a full human language is a considerable undertaking, while the rewards of speaking such an obscure language are less than tangible. :) I am hoping to shift this balance. You can begin speaking Cniglic as soon as you've learned a single word, and you can speak it with complete mastery after learning less than a hundred.

Cniglic is in no way in competition with Lojban. Every Cniglic word is also a word of Lojban, so once you have learned Cniglic you have made a substantial down payment on learning Lojban in the future if you so choose. One of my goals with Cniglic is to lower the barrier to entry of Lojban (lower it all the way to the floor, in fact), so that people can begin their study of Lojban immediately speaking fluently, immediately on a level playing field, with immediate rewards. If Cniglic is successful, my long-term vision is of an entire ladder of languages extending from English to Lojban, with each rung providing new expressive possibilities at the expense of learning just a small number of new words & concepts. This may not make it easier on the whole to learn everything, but hopefully it will make it more fun along the way. :)

If you're interested in learning & participating in Cniglic, you are invited to join the new livejournal community I've created for it: cniglic

(mungojelly)

12:33AM

la'e zoi gy. http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/cmavo_selmaho_order.txt .gy. .iucai

(loop_bell)

5:33PM - A list of common Lojban terms, from Jared Angell on the lojban-beginners list

Types of words
valsi: word
cmavo: structure words
cmene : name phrase
- cmevla : name word

brivla : predicate words of which there are three subtypes:
- gismu : root words
- lujvo : words constructed from rafsi
- fu'ivla : words copied from another language

rafsi : word roots for gismu in creating lujvo
tanru : word phrase
gadri : article/descriptor

Sentence roles
bridi : predicate
selbri : relation/function?
sumti : arguments to the selbri

(matt_arnold)

8:30AM - Statement by the Founder on the 20th anniversary of Lojban

The following is not by me; it's by Bob LeChevalier, known as "Lojbab", one of the founders of Lojban. As is fitting to a twentieth-anniversary statement for our community, it is in Lojban.

ca'o le nunsalci be lenu li reno se nanca la lojban kei mi tercpe loinu peisnu lei fasnu
.i mi pensi
.i mi morji la'edi'e

.i pu'okiku mi na zukte tu'a la lojban .i noda terzu'e .aucu'i .ibabo la jycybyb bilma gi'e xanka le bavra'a be leri cnino bangu .i mi co'a zukte fi lenu le bangu cu renvi ba'o .a'o la jycybyb.

.i ca'oki la pasobizen. nanc. mi ctuca loi tadni la'ezoi gy. loglan. gy goi ly. iku'i la jycybyb na curmi le nu mi tervecnu lei vlacku be ly ja'e lenu le tadni naka'e tadni le valsi .isemu'ibo pa tadni po'u la kiym stidi lenu finti loi cnino valsi befi ly .i mi po'u la lojbab .e la noras .e la tomis .uitlok .i'i co'a finti loi lojbo gismu tezu'e loka tadni joi pilno loi valsi

.ibabo la jycybyb xusra loi nu fukpi jitro ponse loi valsi be ly
.isemu'ibo .e'inai zukte fi loka zifre tadni joi pilno le bangu .e'icu'i

.ibabo le ci prulojbo ku joi la garis.br,djes. cu finti le cnino vlataijva .i co'a jmaji le mapti valsi be loi gismu be lei xa krabau
.isemu'ibo zukte fi loka gi'uste xagmau ly

.ibabo loi prulojbo cu simpe'i lemi zdani fau lei so'umoi jbosalci
.isemu'ibo zukte fi loka le jboce'u cu se'itru .e'e

.ibabo la noras .e mi simspebi'o .iu .ije ritli bau loi prulojbau .ibabo pamoi ke clani simta'a bau la lojban ca'o lemi'a spebi'oli'u .isemu'ibo so'imei jbonunpli

.i ca la'o gy Evecon 88 gy kiku mi'a gubja'o la'o gy Loglan-88 gy no'u la lojban .i so'i prenu cu selci'i .isemu'ibo lo jboce'u cu ranji banro
.i renomei nanca

.i da'okiku .i mi seja'eku morji .o'a .i caku ba'e mi na termu'i fi tu'a la lojban mu'i lenu le ba'emi terzu'e ba'o vajni .einai
.i ku'i doi lojbo ro do .e'u .eidai zukte fi da .a de .a di
.i ba'o tu'a mi kiku vrici terzu'e .i ko cuxna je zukte .ije vrici nunsnada
.i ba'obo selmo'i ba'e do
.i ko lifri

mi'e lojbab

2:32AM - Lojban personified?

There's a character on Danny Phantom that speaks Esperanto. This raises a question: if "the type of people who speak Lojban" had a character that indeed spoke Lojban and represented the interests/personality of the community, what would it be? Would it even be advantageous to have some sort of "mascot", if you will, such as Tux for Linux, or does Lojban retain an advantage from being "mascotless"?

7:21PM - Lojban standardized tests?

In the Lojban-speaking world it seems like everyone that's active is highly knowledgeable of the language. Having some sort of standardized test might make it more accessible. If you used AP-style grading (from 1 to 5) and had tests for beginner, intermediate, advanced, and fluent, you could say "I'm lv. 3 beginner" or "I'm lv. 5 fluent", with the latter ranking showing mastery of the language. This could reduce intimidation for beginners and streamline the process of finding people to talk to online, especially if you had rankings integrated into some sort of forum with corresponding subsections for each level.

I know very little Lojban, and one of the best ways to learn a language is by using it every day. Having Lojban standardized tests and a medium to talk to people at my level would help me for sure. I'd be willing to help with whatever I'm able to in my free time, but the only knowledge I really have to contribute is experience with taking standardized tests. Is anyone else enthusiastic about the idea?

(locilre)

11:56AM - Haiku Space

While I was having my morning coffee, I wondered if the lojban haiku-space was map-able. That is, how long would it take to have a program generate every possible lojban haiku, and then check it for grammatical correctness?

(alexkoch)

2:48PM - German gi'uste translation project

I am proud to announce the translation of the missing 950 dotco gi'uste
entries from je to z. I added them to the wikipages
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=gi%27uste+bau+la+daitc&bl
where pycyn/pne (ki'e sai) started the translation project some time ago.

I am not a professional translator, but I put a lot of time in this
translation, so I hope it is acceptable/good quality (nothing I can judge).
There are still some things to be done and your help is needed, especially
if you can speak German.

-> Translate the missing pieces (ca. 55 words).
There were some gismu which I could not translate and I marked them with a
asterisk sign (*). So if you can translate them, please do so.

-> Review all translations.
There should be a review/proofreading of all translations for correctness,
ideally combined with a review of consistency. I marked all translations I
was unsure about with a question mark. Actually the format from b-g differs a
little bit from that of j-z.

Your help is greatly appreciated. I think gismu
list translation is very important for Lojban as it helps beginners a lot. I
assume there are a lot of people who gave up learning Lojban because it is
very hard to learn definitions that are not in your native language.

About me:
This is also a good moment to introduce myself. :-) I am Alexander Koch, 20
years old and live in Heidelberg, Germany. After my graduation from high
school I did my civil service at a boarding school for disabled people. In
October I will begin my studies in maths and computer science at the
University of Karlsruhe. (If there are lojban learners/speakers in Heidelberg
or Karlsruhe, show up :-). My nickname is alech or .alex., as I am doing a lot
of LaTeX stuff. My hobbies are singing, juggling, judo, languages (learned a
bit of Japanese during my civil service) and of course computers (linux). At
the moment I am about to learn Go and Haskell (just at the very beginning).

I heard about lojban at the 22C3, a hackers (good guys!) conference in Berlin.
A year later I gave a presentation/workshop about lojban at the 23C3, you can
find it (PDF/ODF) at:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/Fahrplan/events/1753.en.html. 8-) I
learned a lot of (so'a/so'e) gismu by gloss words and started reading la
nicte cadzu. I am fascinated by the intelligent design of lojban and its
expressive power. I hope to be able to speak it fluently in the future.

(matt_arnold)

10:46AM - Multiply Signed CLL for Sale

Robin Lee Powell had this to say on the Lojban mailing list about "The Complete Lojban Language":

At the last LogFest, a Lojbanist (who wasn't there) requested that a CLL be signed by everyone there present, and this was done. The person in question has since failed to actually *purchase* said CLL, and has requested that it be offered to the community.

So, if you want it, come get it. Just use the regular PayPal purchase form and specify in the comments that you want the multiply signed copy.