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Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:12:33 -0400
From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban: it's not for babies.
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Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> Pro-tip: there is not a toddler in the world that can emit the
> difference between {cidja} and {citka}.

That is interesting, since in English, the sound of dj isn't considered 
a consonant cluster.

> 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!".

My only suggestion here is a buffered dialect (dEEr-i-bah).  But I'm not 
sure how easily toddlers could learn that.

> 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.

I totally agree.  The rules we adapted from JCB's algorithm for handling 
fricatives and affricates, especially in Chinese which was the most 
heavily weighted source language, and is especially rich in those sounds 
led to too many c, s, j and z, (and also too many vowel a's)

But by the time that was clear, remaking the words again was precisely 
what we couldn't consider doing, even if we could find better rules.

> 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.

That is true, but I think baby talk dialects are prone to eliminating 
such conflicting categories.  English is pretty dense in short word 
space, and also has homonyms of different grammatical categories, but 
kids still learn it.

It would be interesting to learn something about Chinese baby talk.  The 
word space is so dense that they need 4 tones to keep things 
intelligible, and even then many common words are expressed as a lujvo 
(compound of 2 or 3 elemental particles that by themselves bear meaning, 
often the same meaning as the longer word).  Do Chinese kids pick up the 
tonal qualities early?

I've heard it said that Russian kids often don't master their language's 
phonology until age 10, and Michael had one of the common childhood 
speech impediments at age 6, when he pronounced "Andzhela"s name as 
"Anzhoya", which I think means that he couldn't control palatalization. 
  I think that a Russian dialect without palatalization would be just as 
hard to understand as a toddler's version of Lojban.

> 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.

but dada is a cmene rather than a brivla in most usage (and daddy also, 
though it can function a a descriptive noun).  The corresponding lojban 
baby-talk name might be "dib." or plausibly "dir.", or hearkening back 
to Cinderelwood, "paf."

"relber: la pavber pu darxi mi doi paf
  pavber: la relber pu tikpa mi doi paf"

lojbab


-- 
Bob LeChevalier    lojbab@lojban.org    www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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