Lojban (IPA [ˈloʒban], official full name Lojban: a realization of Loglan) is a syntactically unambiguous, predicate logic-based constructed language which was created by the Logical Language Group in 1987 as a realization of Loglan, with the intent to make the language more complete, usable, and freely available. It has the ISO 639 language code jbo.
* It encourages you to think clearly and logically.
* It lets you express ideas precisely, but allows you to be vague when you want to.
* It can easily express a much wider range of emotions than most natural languages.
* It helps you step out of your cultural conditioning.
* Computers can understand it.
* It's good for discussing philosophy.
* It's good for writing poetry ...
* As a language for human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence research.
* As an interlanguage for translation - it would probably be easier and more accurate to translate from, say, Korean into Lojban then from Lojban to German, than directly from Korean to German.
* As a "meta-language" i.e. a language for describing languages.
* As a language for international law.
* As a way of improving our understanding of different cultures.
* As a tool in psychotherapy and other forms of self-development.
* As an international language.
The language itself shares many of the features and goals of Loglan; in particular, Lojban:
* Has a grammar that is based on predicate logic, and is capable of expressing complex logical constructs precisely.
* Has no irregularities or ambiguities in spelling or grammar, so it can be easily parsed by computer.
* Is designed to be as culturally neutral as possible.
* Is simple to learn and use compared to many natural languages.
* Possesses an intricate system of attitudinal indicators which effectively communicate contextual emotion.
While the initial goal of the Loglan project was to investigate the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the active Lojban community has additional goals for the language, 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
* Personal creativity
Like most languages with few speakers, Lojban lacks much of an associated body of literature.
I think it all sounds very interesting, having a language that both computers and humans can understand. I’m still reading a bit more about it, but I thought that since we are already a bit out of the ‘norm’ (riding unicycles and all
http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words/lojban.html
Lojban (pronounced [ˈloʒban] ⓘ) is a logical, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be syntactically unambiguous. It succeeds the Loglan project.
The Logical Language Group (LLG) began developing Lojban in 1987. The LLG sought to realize Loglan's purposes and further improve the language by making it more usable and freely available (as indicated by its official full English title, Lojban: A Realization of Loglan). After a long initial period of debating...
That’s actually pretty cool. Of course, I got sidetracked and spent 20 minutes reading random links about logic, and language, but the Lojban thing sounds interesting.
I’ll have to try to squeeze learning this language into my already-busy schedule…
…And then write a school paper on Lojban, in Lojban of course, and present it to a class.
Meh. Just another flash in the pan.
Esperanto has been developed for many of the same reasons, and has been around for well over 100 years, but do you ever hear anything about it?
Next fad, please!
burjzyntski:
Next fad: unicycling.
It’ll never catch on. Hasn’t yet, at least.
I don’t think Esperanto addresses talking to computers. That could be useful. And of course just about anything is an improvement on the English language. But try getting Americans to learn a different language…
…is practically hopeless.
Computers cannot truly understand anything…
I hear veiled references to it when people how each speak 4 different languages poorly, and one well that none of the other 3 speak well, and they all converse in what’s called Desperanto.
we should all just speak german like ben franklin wanted. its a more pure, more awesome english
The USA defeated Germany to prevent just that!
), we might as well adopt a language of our own.
