Message-ID: <4722A077.5020609@lojban.org>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:20:39 -0400
From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
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To:  lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: geodesic dome
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Jared Angell wrote:
> Perhaps lojban is such a 'perfect' language in terms of how well thought 
> out and logical it is on so many levels that it is impossible to speak 
> it on a broad level with it's current rules.

Lojban is hardly a "perfect language".  It was designed to be a 
"different" language, but still a speakable one.

Since people DO speak it, it can be spoken.  Limitations on fluency are 
due to the same sorts of things that keep people from fluency in most 
other foreign languages - the most important of these being not enough 
practice of the intensive kind that requires fluency.

> If a word such a geodesic dome requires this much debate

It doesn't.  If >I< wanted to say something about a geodesic dome, I 
would simply make up a word that fit my intended context, and use it. 
But you asked for a word for the concept, context free.  Furthermore, 
since this is a teaching mailing list for beginners, I am prone to 
explaining things in detail that I wouldn't have to think about in 
actual conversation.  Most of the others speaking to that specific 
question are beginners just like you, so their "debate" is merely an 
attempt to learn.

 > then if the
> language suddenly had 1,000,000 speakers how would anyone ever be able 
> to get anything across on a specific topic.

If they were fluent speakers, rather easily.  If they were novice 
speakers, with great difficulty.  As is true for any language.

> English (as well as all other natural languages with over a million 
> speakers) has specific glossaries/verbages/jargons for specific topics.

And how many beginning language learners know those glossaries or 
jargons?  At this point we have beginning speakers and intermediate 
speakers.  When we have advanced speakers, then they will have 
sufficient command of the vocabulary as to be able to talk circles 
around me.

> I think that Lojban's having been decentralized, with respect to 
> geography,for it's root words has created a problem that is only easily 
> resolved if more root words are added.  Much more.  Perhaps 4x as many 
> as there already are.

We don't need more root words.  We need more words.  But since 
relatively few have learned the words that we already have, more words 
won't necessarily solve the problem of fluent speech.  It would help 
people who write using a dictionary to actually have a dictionary with a 
lot of words.  But fluency precludes dictionary use.

> I'm not sure how the base Lojban words were picked and I understand that 
> they combine to make millions of words 

there are roughly a million possible 2-part lujvo, 2 billion 3-part 
lujvo, and 3 trillion 4-part lujvo.  Most of these will be relatively 
useless (thank the cevrai of your choice - a newly coined Lojban word 
that has no real English equivalent).

> but perhaps in our high-tech 
> words millions of words is not enough?

So far as I know, English is the only language with a lexicon much 
larger than a million words.  I doubt if any English speaker actually 
knows a million words of the language (I've seen estimates that a highly 
educated English speaker typically has a passive vocabulary of perhaps 
300,000 words, but probably uses only 1/10 of those at most)

But every natural language has words with multiple unrelated meanings, 
something highly undesirable in Lojban, so counting words is pretty much 
a waste of time.

> Alternatively perhaps Lojban should not have been made in this way.

Then it would not have been Lojban.

There are dozens of other conlangs that have been proposed, most of 
which make their words differently.  Other lists are appropriate for 
discussing them.

> Being able to say 'geodesic dome' should really not be so hard.

It isn't.  Being able to say it and define it in Lojban is a bit more 
difficult, and one needs the place structure definition of a Lojban word 
in order to properly use it other than in an adhoc fashion.

 > I doubt
> it took Fuller and a team of language buffs over a week of debating to 
> make a word for the concept in English.

Who knows how many other words he considered before coming up with the 
one he finally used?  How many people know what "fluxions" or "fluents" 
are in mathematics (those are the words Newton used for differential and 
integral calculus)?

And how long did it take the dictionary definers to come up with a good 
definition that covers all uses of the word (some of which may not fit 
Fuller's ideas)?  Dictionary writing is one of the most specialized and 
tricky forms of writing there is.

lojbab