So far as I can see, Lojban's vocab is unfinished only in= the sense that new words can be created. but that, hopefully, will always = be the case, so hardly counts as an objection. As for the rest here, back t= o basics: Lojban is logical exactly because its grammar is based (more loos= ely every year) on that of Formal Logic and is unambiguous only syntactical= ly: every well-formed sentence of Lojban has exactly one possible correct p= arse. Anything more is a snare and a delusion -- and not officially c= laimed (though we do occasionally keep quiet about them). Vocabulary = assimilation need not destroy Lojban's one unambiguity, so long as the prod= ucts of assimilation continue to fall into the appropriate classes, which i= s one form that assimilation might take (indeed, lacking this, how woulds it be assimilation?). Nor would ambiguous words be a problem = for the official situation, however embarrassing they might be otherwise.&n= bsp;
And, of course, finally, who the hell want to propose Lojban for a= n auxlang? That is way outside its design specs (not that it has done= that good a job at meeting those specs, but that doesn't certify it for so= me other purpose instead).

From: Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, January 5, 2011 4:55:38 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Lojban = is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that!

On 5 January 2011 22:58, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>= wrote:

Esperanto has at least one word which proves that its words cannot be
unambiguously parsed...

There are multiple, but th= at is irrelevant. Like I said, Esperanto never even aimed to be fully unamb= iguous and as thousands of languages worldwide (Esperanto included, because= it has native speakers) prove, a language doesn't *need* to be fully unamb= iguous to be a usable and working language.

The main thing that Lojban lacks for being used as a global language is not=
the precise definition of every corner case. It's vocabulary.

<= div>
I.e. it's not finished, which is what I said.

...its morphology is defined so as to prevent collisions like "avaro", it takes longer to invent vocabulary in Lojban. You can't take some Latinate term that's commonly used in many languages, some of them unrelated to Latin, an= d
expect to make a brivla out of it just by changing "-us" to "-o". You have = to
consider whether a lujvo would capture the meaning better, whether the seco= nd
consonant is in a cluster, and whether the same word could mean something totally different (such as "malpigi" which could be either an acerola fruit=
or an insect's kidney).

Speaking = of which, I think that, unfortunately, is the main flaw of lojban. I unders= tand that it can't possibly hope to be literally unambiguous if its vocabul= ary doesn't operate like that, but that ensures that if people ever do star= t to use lojban for everyday communication and if lojban ever gets native s= peakers, its so praised unambiguity will very soon melt away. Vocabulary as= similation is unavoidable and you can't possibly expect every native speake= r of lojban to know which new brivla will create an ambiguity, so native lo= jban speakers would naturally start to incorporate words from other languag= es in their vocabulary, those words would inevitably create ambiguities, an= d after a couple of decades its precious ambiguity would be nowhere. (And t= hat's without even mentioning other ways in which a language evolves when i= t's used by people as their main language for everyday communication.)

So... as far as I've understood it, this is how it goes:

1) Let'= s make lojban the world's official common language because it's completely = logical and unambiguous.
2) lojban is made the world's official common l= anguage.
3) People use lojban every day to talk to each other.
4) As was the case= with Esperanto, this eventually results in people having lojban as their n= ative language, who proceed to use lojban as their main language for everyd= ay communication.
5) This makes lojban evolve.
6) After a couple of decades, lojban is no = longer unambiguous nor completely logical and as time goes by is more and m= ore like languages which have naturally evolved among humans.

Wait, = so what was the initial reason to use lojban as the world's official common= language? After all, lojban's unambiguity and logicality seems to be one o= f the main arguments for that, and yet if it did get chosen for that role i= t will have stopped being unambiguous and logical not long after its use be= came widespread. So if we're going to have an "ordinary" language as the wo= rld's official common language in the end anyway, why not chose one which i= s not unfinished?

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