Re: [lojban]

[xah lee <xah@xahlee.org>]

natural languages don't come with a design committee. They 'break' or 
evolve and basically nobody cares except a few academic pundits. The 
continuous-breaking is precisely how natural languages are made. 
Lojban, by its nature and birth, is a product of a committee with a 
prescription as precise as the science of logic, and that being its 
reason of existence.

if lojban became popular but however lost its logic connection, then 
such success is no longer a success of a logical language. (we might as 
well cheer for prevalence of Esperanto.)

my thesis is that lojban can never become popular yet maintain its 
identity.

my view for lojban is for it being a unique logic system with a content 
of human communication. And, for it to be mainly used in research or 
science. For it to be maintained by logicians and linguistics.

  Xah
  xah@xahlee.org
  http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


On Jan 30, 2005, at 2:17 PM, Robert LeChevalier wrote:

xah lee wrote:

>> (i don't think lojban is ever suitable for human communication as
>> with natural languages.
>>
>> Do you have any basis for that opinion?
>>
> essentially that humans are not logical machines.... in any natural
> situation communication far outruns any logical concern... employing
> body language, context, situational... and perhaps the actual literal
> content in speech plays only some 10% of all thins communicated. In
> emergency, love affairs, power play, ... any situation... all these
> things are happening implicitly, even among you the reader and me right
> at this moment. The only exception is say idol chat among linguists
> inside sealed ivy towers (as the case of online lojban chat or in this
> forum.).
>
> so in natural settings, lojban will be broken as soon as it is used for
> real... just as people constant break English.
>
So your argument is that  you don't think that "lojban is ever suitable 
for human communication as with natural languages" because people will 
break the rules just as they do for English. By that reasoning however, 
Russian, French and Chinese will never "be suitable for human 
communication", because people will break the rules just as they do for 
English. Either that, or you have to prove that Lojban is LESS suitable 
than the other languages for human communication when people DO break 
the rules, which might be true but would be hard to prove until we have 
fluent speakers facing the sorts of situation where unsuitability would 
occur.

Lojban would not be a failure as a language merely because people do 
not always speak it flawlessly.  I'm bothered when I see people setting 
a higher standard for Lojbanic success than they do for success of 
English.

lojbab



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