[lojban-beginners] Re: Do you agree with this guy?

["H. Felton" <fagricipni@gmail.com>]

On 9/26/08, Killian De Volder <killian.de.volder@scarlet.be> wrote:
> I most certainly do not.
>  I give it's hard to learn in the start.
>  But for me, the way lojban is constructed feels more natural / close to how
> I think, then a natural language.

I agree with the idea that Lojban "feels more natural / close to how
I think, then a natural language."  I don't even think that Lojban is
that hard to learn comparatively to a natural language

I have seen Lojban criticised as being overly fussy about requiring
complex grammar rules (eg, rules about when terminators are required).
 However, I am a native monoglot English speaker and I find that
English is far more intricate and fussy (eg, irregular plurals and
verb inflections).  The only reason that English's complexities don't
bother me more than they do is that I have used English since infancy.
 Even then, I find that in talking about complex or nuanced topics
that I frequently pause to figure out the best phrasing to express the
concepts accurately.

And I still can't figure how to accurately express "la saras. mo do"
in English, even though that is a question that I want to express
(with different cmene) on a non-infrequent basis.  I usually say "Who
is Sarah?", but I usually get an attempt at an identification; eg, The
little girl with red hair that you sometimes see around here"; rather
than the relationship I am looking for; eg, "my friend's daughter."

If I say "How is Sarah related to you?", people assume that I am
speaking of family relationships, and still don't give the answer I
want in a case like the example above.

> > -----Original Message-----
> > [mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org]On Behalf Of
> tijlan
> > Sent: 26 September 2008 11:04

> > Is Lojban really more like a computer language than a human language?
> > Is it too difficult for us humans to learn?

I have half-seriously/half-jokingly described Lojban as cross between
a natural language and a computer language, but that well-definedness
is a feature not a bug.