It's now time for us to take a look at lojban, has a special place in the history of constructed (planned) languages.
It is not the first attempt to create a 'logical' language but it is by far the most successful.
It is also the only 'reformed' version of a planned language to become more successful than the original.
The rest of the material is after the jump.
nb. the material here comes from a number of sources, including the official lojban site and my personal interactions (some years ago) with lojbanists on an email list devoted to IAL's (International Auxiliary Languages). Any mistakes are mine.
lojban alphabet ' , . a b c d e f g i j k l m n o p r s t u v x y z
The symbols ' ('h') , (non-liaison) and . (glottal stop, pause) replace punctuation and intonation. The ideal is that the spoken and written messages are 100% mutually convertible.
Origins (1955–1987)
1955 : James Cooke Brown begins developing Loglan [ log(ical)lan(guage)] for research purposes.
- test of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (in reverse?), meta-language for human computer interaction, etc
Those interested in pursuing Brown's ideas on their own ran into a number of obstacles, including but not limited to the following:
- Brown considered it a research project and not a language to be actively used
- Brown claimed legal propietary rights over the language (it has been since determined that a language cannot be copyrighted)
- There was criticism of its structure (too 'European' with singular/plural distinctions, gender marking etc)
Initial development (1987–1997)
Those interested eventually formed the Logical Language Group with two aims 1) to create a similar language which anyone could use and 2) to promote its use.
The language they ultimately came up with was lojban (from logji – logic and bangu – language) with a tweaked (modified) grammar from Loglan and new computer generated vocabulary from Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian and Arabic. The idea was to create new, independent roots which would still seem somewhat familiar, and therefore easy to remember, for speakers of many languages. There has been criticism that the programmers didn't know the languages in question and therefore the 'Russian' element might be a co-verb with no semantic relation to the root.
The freeze period (1997–2002)
Following 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". This period, officially 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–)
Slowly (very slowly) expanding usage. At one point it was claimed that (paraphrase) "everyone who speaks lojban can comfortably have dinner together". As of March, 2010 about 2000 people had expressed enough interest to buy a book or join a list. It is estimated that at any time there are between 50-100 active users (that is who can and will answer questions) on email lists or IRC chatrooms.
Structure of lojban:
John is the father of Sam.
John hits Sam.
John is taller than Sam.
These examples all describe relationships between John and Sam.
father describes a static relationship, expresed by a noun (and preposition) in English
hits describes an active relationship, expressed by a verb in English
taller describes an attributive relationship, expressed by an adjective (and conjunction) in English
lojban makes no such grammatical distinctions; these three sentences, when expressed in lojban, are structurally identical. The same part of speech is used to represent the relationship.
In order to minimize the tendency to think in traditional grammatical terms, users of lojban have created their own terminology to describe their language.
In formal logic this is called a "predication''; in lojban it is called a "bridi'', and the central part of speech is the "selbri''. Logicians refer to the things thus related as arguments, while lojbanists call them "sumti''.
bridi (predicate) ______________|________________ | | John is the father of Sam |____| |______________| |___| | | | sumti selbri sumti A relationship, has a definite number of things being related. In English, "give'' has three places: donor, recipient and gift. In lojban, each selbri has a specified number and type of arguments, known collectively as its "place structure''. The primary task of constructing a lojban sentence, after choosing the relationship itself, is deciding what you will use to fill in the sumti places.
sample:
The North Wind and the Sun
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
la berbif. joi la sol
la berbif. joi la sol. puki darlu lejei ri jikau ra vlimau le drata kei co'i lenu lo litru vi klama gi'e tagji dasni lo kamgla kosta .i lego'i cu tugni lenu le pamoi snada be lenu naldasri'a le litru le kosta du'o ru'a vlimau le drata .ibazibo la berbif. cu rocrai brife .iku'i go ri vlimau brife gi le litru cu tagmau vaungau le kosta ra .ibaze'e la berbif. uu cu sisti lenu troci .ibabo la sol. cu glare dirce .ibazibo le litru co'u dasni le kosta .iseki'ubo la berbif. cu bilga lenu tugni ledu'u la sol. vlimau
everything you need to know about lojban can be found here.
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