| I don't think it is the case any more -- if it ever was -- that translating
from one of Loglan& Lojban to the other is merely a matter of substituting one word for another and perhaps occasionally changing a construction. Lojban is provably grammatically unambiguous, with all the rigor aboout grammar that that entails, while Loglan's grammar may work but is not (last time I checked) completely proven and so is slightly more free. In the decade and some of separation a number of changes have occurred in both, rarely in the same direction. Most of them are the result of solving a problem when it turned up, though quite a few in Lojban are the result of rethinking whole areas from scratch: the humongous tense system, for example, or the plethora of negations available, or the enriched emotion/attitude systems. It has been argued that you can say anything that you can say in Loglan in Lojban abvout as easily, but that there are Lojban expressions which cannot be nearly as easily rendered in Loglan. All the examples proposed have been challenged, but most of the challenges have been questioned, so it is not clear wheether there is any advantage in that respect either. What Lojban has at the moment is a thriving community, while Loglan is deep in a continuing transition phase with the resultant loss of continuity of purpose and membership. |