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Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2013 01:42:10 -0700
From: Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: [lojban] Lojban: it's not for babies.
Message-ID: <20130902084209.GA17067@stodi.digitalkingdom.org>
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So I'm discovering that Lojban is a pretty crappy language for
toddler-level speech.  Throughout this, the caveat "it might be
different if they only heard Lojban" applies, but that's never
likely to happen, so...  The twins are 22 months old currently.

The phonology of Lojban is *so* hard for toddlers that it's not even
funny.  It's at the "You really shouldn't try this ever" level of
bad.

Pro-tip: there is not a toddler in the world that can emit the
difference between {cidja} and {citka}.

They understand the language well enough, and the structure doesn't
seem to bother them at all, but uttering it is just *so* hard for
them.

Here are the big issues:

1.  Every brivla has a consonant clusters.  Consonant clusters are
*hard* for children of this age.  Even when they attempt them, the
usually fail; they've been trying to say {dirba} for a while, to
please me, but it's mostly "DEE-bah!".

2.  OMFG are there too many uses of {c} and {s}.  It freaking
ridiculous, people.  I routinely hit tounge-twister sentences, and
*I'm an adult*, with no known speech impediments.  {ro le cifnu cu
citka le cifnu cidja}, which is an entirely reasonable "describing
the world" thing for me to say to the jbocifnu, is hard as hell to
say!  A toddler stands no chance.

3.  They can easily say many cmavo, but cmavo space is *way* too
dense.  Even if they can tell the difference when *I* say {.i'e} vs.
{.i'a}, and I'm not sure they can, they couldn't emit the difference
to save their lives.  They say something that sounds like {.ai nai},
and I literally don't know if they mean {.au nai} (which would be
correct/true) or {.e'a/.i'e nai} (which would be amusing imitation).

That last, as latro'a pointed out in IRC, is especially important
because it means you can't have a baby-talk form of the language:
Lojban is so densely packed that if you remove almost anything, you
get another word, even ignoring that you're suddenly in an entirely
different grammatical category.

The end result is that while they can, in fact, say {dirba}, they
choose "dada" or "daddy" over {dirba} *every time*.  Even though
they adore me to pieces and have very strong desire to please me.
They just hugely prefer to use English because it's *far* easier.

This is starting to shift slightly (and I mean, like, in the last
2-3 days), but the difference is still palpable.

I'm not going anywhere with this, really, and I'm not going to stop
speaking it to them, I just thought I should share.

-Robin

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