A taste of Lojban

[Exez]

I request some help from any Lojbanists who may see this

I am making a presentation on conlangs, and I make a passing reference to Lojban. I mention that is an engineered/logical language, but I also want to show the people what is this all about.

The best way is to present some 3 or 4 exemplary phrases which might show most of the peculiarities and uniqueness of the language, showing functions that make it apart from the natural languages, especially English.

For example, if some English people were curious about what that famous language called "Latin" is all about, the presenter would display a sentence which highlights the use of cases, verb tenses, and proceed to a brief syntactic analysis. He would perhaps make use of participles which are not that common in English.
That would be an adequate taste of Latin that would enable people realize what make Latin the language it was.

Of course, the presenter would avoid much technical details and trivialities. Perhaps he would not go as far as to mention what are the differences between is, hic, iste and ille.

I have tried to "study" some Lojban in order to detect such peculiarities, and find or compose some exemplary phrases that would make people understand why it was created (and why it was presented in some sci-fi works as an intergalactic language). However I got tired before finding anything that impressed me enough. The most peculiar feature is that it has no parts of speech but rather "functions" and "parameters" (to use some programming jargon). Other than that, I found the types of the articles interesting, but not important or simple enough to be displayed in such a presentation (although I am open to suggestions). The few short basic phrases that I learned are not that idiomatic to display the logical/disambiguative features of the language.

If anyone of you can think of any Lojban phrases that can work as introductory, demostrative, or exemplary of the language...?

[JeremyHussell]

It's hard to make disambiguation in Lojban interesting without showing examples of the problems it avoids. English has homonyms, heteronyms, heterographs, homophones, and homographs, but Lojban doesn't, so a sentence like "I decided to desert my dessert in the desert." isn't particularly interesting when translated into Lojban ("mi pu jdice lo du'u cliva le mi titselsai ne'i le sudytu'a"). Lojban also avoids attachment ambiguities, so you can know that "in the desert" is modifying "to desert" not "decided", and you can switch the attachment by adding an extra word to the translation.

Lojban is sometimes called a "logical language", and its vocabulary is a little bit biased towards concepts from formal logic. It's the language where "Let's go." is "e'o mi'o klama", but "This sentence is false." is "na nei". It also tends to make more and finer distinctions than English does, like "jmapri" and "jmaba'a": both translate as "footprint" in English, but in Lojban the former would be used for muddy footprints on a kitchen floor and the latter would be used for footprints in fresh concrete, the distinction being between footprints caused by material left behind and footprints caused by leaving a foot-shaped hole or impression.

[rpglover64]

It is called a "logical language" not because it is particularly good at expressing formal logic but because the structure of its sentences is inspired by formal logic predicates (though the latter lends itself well to the former).

{na nei} is not the (currently accepted) way to say "this statement is false"; {la'e dei jitfa} is considered better.

W.R.T more and finer distinctions, I'm particularly fond of a simple one {ticysku} vs. {jifsku}, which mean, respectively, to say something deceptive and to say something false. Another notable one is that lojban has four different words for four different senses of "because" (physical cause, logical implication, social justification, and emotional motivation). That said, it also allows you to be much more vague than English does by leaving out almost any portion of the sentence you want inferred from context.

[rpglover64]

Someone on the lojban mailing list decided to reply, but as they're not registered here, I'm forwarding their text:

Hi!

When you compare two languages, you will usually find out that one
makes some fine semantic distinctions that the other doesn't. So, I
don't think that is a particular characteristic of Lojban.

Its unambiguous syntax is, for me, its most remarkable feature. I
liked the suggestion of contrasting it with examples of ambiguity in
English. So, here is one inspired in a xkcd comic
(http://xkcd.com/1087/):

"The pig is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider."

Cutting it short, the related Lojban vocabulary is as follows:
{lo xarju}: "The pig"
{lo mencre jukni}: "The intelligent spider"
{selcatryfanta}: "x1 prevents x2 from being killed by x3 with
killing method x4"

To get the original ordering of the passive "is saved from", we can
add the operator {se}, which swaps x1 and x2, giving:
{se selcatryfanta}: "x1 is prevented by x2 from being killed by x3
with killing method x4"

The intended meaning of the sentence (in the children's book) would
then be rendered as
{lo xarju cu se selcatryfanta lo mencre jukni}
(The pig (is saved from being slaughtered) by an intelligent spider)

while the alternative interpretation would be
{lo xarju cu se selcatryfanta fi lo mencre jukni}
(The pig is saved from (being slaughtered by an intelligent spider))

It gets really easy to the audience if you use a colour for the
arguments ({lo xarju} and {lo mencre jukni}) and another one for the
main relation ({se selcatryfanta}), and label the arguments with "x1",
"x2" and "x3".

The {fi} tag (from the fa-fe-fi-fo-fu series) unambiguosly places {lo
mencre jukni} at position x3, where otherwise it corresponds to
position x2. On the other hand, the thematic preposition "by" is
ambiguous as to whether it refers to the saver or the killer.

{cu} just separates the first argument from the predicate.

Depending on your time and audience interest, you can go further to
explain that:
1. everything is based on properties and relations, so
{xarju}: "x1 is a pig of species x2"
{jukni}: "x1 is a spider of species x2"
{mencre}: "x1 is intelligent by standard x2"
2. {mencre} and {selcatryfanta} are just compounds from the basic words
{menli}: "x1 is a mind of x2"
{certu}: "x1 is skilled at x2 by standard x3"
{catra}: "x1 kills x2 by method x3"
{fanta}: "x1 prevents x2 from happening"

You can also talk briefly about attitudinals and evidentials, which are amusing.

Some details, just for reference:
1. More straightforward expressions of each meaning are
{lo mencre jukni cu fanta lo du'u lo xarju cu se catra}
"The intelligent spider prevents that the pig be killed"
{fanta lo du'u lo mencre jukni cu catra lo xarju}
"Something prevents that the intelligent spider kill the pig"
2. Some (maybe most, I don't know) lojbanists would insist that, in
the case where the spider saves the pig, it is not really the
arthropode who prevents the slaughter, but some action by it taken.
This implicit abstraction would be marked with a {tu'a} prefixing the
description, so,
{lo xarju cu se selcatryfanta tu'a lo mencre jukni}
3. {mencre} is a common word, defined in the dictionary.
{selcatryfanta}, on the other hand, was just made up. However, it
follows a very regular pattern, which assures me that any competent
lojbanist should have no problem understanding it. We call this
/jvajvo/, from {javni}, "rule", and {lujvo}, "compound".


Hoping to have helped!

mi'e .filipos.