Lojban • Hacker News Board

Re: Lojban

#31

Post by iakdnf » Sat, May 30, 2015, 12:48 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #21

rayalez wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on your goals. Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish. To me the appeal of Lojban is in "expanding your mind" and using different tools for thinking. Also, I've recently read somewhere p…

>Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish. Unless you find Chinese or Chinese culture really interesting or have a more mercenary reason to learn Chinese I'd recommend Spanish. I've lived in China for thre…

Learning Chinese will often take up all your free time if you want to do it right. You cant pick it up half assed like other languages. Ive been learning it pretty hard the last 7 months and am pretty conversational but still get lost in conversations often, but can always clarify meaning by asking various questions, so I have attained an awkard level of fluency.

I recommend only speaking Chinese and forgoing English at all times, unless youre talking to someone who cant speak Chinese.

My friend has much better listening comprehension skills and has been here about 18 months, and Im on track to be on his level soon. We actually try, though. To be honest, most people hardly try.

Re: Lojban

#32

Post by tzs » Sat, May 30, 2015, 12:56 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #30

sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

xkcd is to nerds what Seinfeld is to comedy.

Its worse. Its approaching "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" territory amongst the nerdy set. (1) (1) It's turtles all the way down. (1)

Of course there is a Darmok and Jalad xkcd: https://xkcd.com/902/

Re: Lojban

#33

Post by sho_hn » Sat, May 30, 2015, 1:06 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #26

erikb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English you have time. You say if something [happens] at some time, [is happening] now, has [happened] or [will happen]. In Chinese, for instance, you don't have grammar for that (=no tense). But you have grammar to determine if that what's happening has started to happen, is in the middle of happening (not sure how to express that in English), is finished and in many regards even what result was achieved (=aspect…

I believe my response wasn't clear enough. I don't believe that the statement "By learning a different language, you also learn how to think and reason differently." is useful. I do not think it's useful for most people to learn Linear B. Instead, I think there are more effective ways to 'learn how to think and reason differently' in the same amount of time, if that's one's goal. In addition, the comment about gender…

Nitpick: Linear B is not a language.

Re: Lojban

#34

Post by noonespecial » Sat, May 30, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #32

noonespecial wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its worse. Its approaching "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" territory amongst the nerdy set. (1) (1) It's turtles all the way down. (1)

Of course there is a Darmok and Jalad xkcd: https://xkcd.com/902/

Which is now the D&J@T xkcd for that particular episode of TNG...

So. Many. Turtles.

Re: Lojban

#35

Post by falcolas » Sat, May 30, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

eemax wrote: post #2

Learning a conlang seems like fun. But should I start with Lojban or Esperanto? My impression is that Lojban is meant to be as logically unambiguous (in terms of grammar) as possible, while Esperanto seeks to be more of an international/universal language. I think Esperanto is more widely spoken? Both are apparently somewhat easier to learn than other languages. So which one?

One more thing to consider: given its logically unambiguous nature, Lojban would make a great language for communicating with a computer...

Re: Lojban

#36

Post by jejones3141 » Sat, May 30, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

I've always wondered about the way predicate words are chosen in Loglan and Lojban, i.e. maximizing a weighted sum of phonemes common to the candidate word and the words in widely spoken natural languages. The only English speakers who would recognize "blanu" as corresponding to "blue" are those who know something about those conlangs, and I bet the same could be said for Chinese speakers and "lan". Esperanto is criticized by some as Eurocentric, but at least some people will recognize the vocabulary.

Re: Lojban

#37

Post by Jack000 » Sat, May 30, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #21

rayalez wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on your goals. Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish. To me the appeal of Lojban is in "expanding your mind" and using different tools for thinking. Also, I've recently read somewhere p…

>Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish. Unless you find Chinese or Chinese culture really interesting or have a more mercenary reason to learn Chinese I'd recommend Spanish. I've lived in China for thre…

I think it's probably easier to learn the phonetics of Chinese than reading/writing at first and bootstrap from there. Most of the written information in Latin languages are contained in the first and last characters of each word, while in Chinese it's in the outer edges of each character. The tones are a bit tough for non-native speakers, but they're very consistent so once you "get it" it becomes much easier.

Also you need to actually visit China to take advantage of the "extending the number of people you can communicate with" benefit.

Re: Lojban

#38

Post by baisong » Sat, May 30, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

eemax wrote: post #2

Learning a conlang seems like fun. But should I start with Lojban or Esperanto? My impression is that Lojban is meant to be as logically unambiguous (in terms of grammar) as possible, while Esperanto seeks to be more of an international/universal language. I think Esperanto is more widely spoken? Both are apparently somewhat easier to learn than other languages. So which one?

Start with Toki Pona: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_pona

Re: Lojban

#39

Post by ColinWright » Sat, May 30, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #20

gw wrote: post #12

Boy, I have fond memories of participating in the Lojban Yahoo group back in 2003 when I was 16. I carried around the Cowan book to my classes and loved reading random sections. I was in awe of how elegantly it was designed, and it inspired me to invent my own languages. My only complaint about the language was about the reliance on word order instead of prepositions to determine the relationship between nouns. It ma…

You could always prefix the arguments with their place markers. Then choose to move them around, or leave them in their default positions. Most selbri (predicates) never had many sumti (arguments), and the default first or second were designed (rightly or wrongly) to be the most common. Very like arguments to a function, and then having the option of having named argument. And if there was no parameter you could add…

PS: Thanks for the sporadic upvotes on this - nice to know my comment was interesting. Please consider upvoting this request for help:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629868

Largely speaking it has sunk without trace, but another couple of votes will get it to the "Ask" page, so there's a chance someone who can help me will see it, and I'd appreciate that.

Edit: And almost immediately there's a vote - thank you, I do really appreciate that.

Re: Lojban

#40

Post by Jack000 » Sat, May 30, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

It feels like natural languages would evolve shortcuts based on the cultural context in which they arise.

I would think that a language based on predicate logic would be less efficient at communicating oft-expressed things, like a Huffman code dictionary where all the entries are weighted equally.