[lojban] Lojban wall of complexity (beginner thoughts)

[Bruno Durin <bruno.durin@gmail.com>]

Coi rodo

I am a beginner and I am trying to summarize some thoughts and ideas about my experience of my first steps in Lojban. So please bear in mind that part of, or maybe all, of what I am saying may be moot because it's only the reflect of my low level in Lojban. Please note also that English is not my mother tongue (I'm French). I also send this message on this mailing list because to my mind it falls in a broader scope that just beginner questions.

On the one hand it's quite easy to find on the web info about Lojban (especially the wikipedia page, then the lojban.org site) and tools to learn (tutorial, google wave lessons, grammar reference book, third-party web site such as memrise.com). After some work, it's easy to grasp how to use the language to express simple thoughts or to run a simple conversation about dailylife topics (even if I am still far from being able to do so). On the other hand, I had hard times to find more info on some detailed /subtle points of the grammar, to understand whether the material I was finding (especially in lojban.org) was up to date or deprecated, to identify the major contributors to the language, in short if I could trust the source and learn from it or not.

In order to understand my point, let me explain why I am interested in Lojban. I am not interested by Lojban as a language to speak with other people. The only part that I find really interesting and even fascinating is the non ambiguity and the consequences of it in terms of possible "computation" by a computer. Best example which I have found so far is the parser (for example, I played with camxes), which is able to state whether the text is grammatical and to output the parsing tree. The next step I'd like to make is to use my little knowledge of the language to start writing some non ambiguous text about technical subjects (the idea is that information extraction by a computer program in a text written in Lojban would be far easier than in other natural languages). The only example I could find is the translation of the first page of an algebra textbook whose name I have forgotten.

So let's imagine I would like to translate the following small text on classes to describe what is object programming (this is a very bad description, but anyway)

"Classes are composed of members and methods. Two classes can be linked by an inheritance relationship. A class has a constructor, whose role is to initialize an instance of the class and a destructor, whose role is clean the instance before memory desallocation."

So how do I decide which part of Lojban to use? Cmavo like "I define", "I state", etc.? Or should I look for gismo that express the relationship (something like: "members" pagbu "class" .i "methods" pagbu "class")? Or use set constructs with "du" or "mintu" and mex to express the fact that class = set {members, methods} which could also be a valid way to define class at the level of details of my silly example? To which extend should I translate computer science words? Use standard morphology as for "spaghetti" translation to Lojban? Use "klesi" for class or "le'a" to express category? etc. At this stage it seems to me that it's not only a question of my better learning Lojban, it's also a question of building new vocabulary, of knowing how to choose a construct rather than another (finding the right style in Lojban to write about a given field --here it's computer science--, as there is a specific style to follow when writing mathematics (theorems for example) in English), of understanding thoroughly Lojban design not to spoil it (for example by using systematically mex constructs to write formal definitions that have nothing to do with mathematics, as I could do with "class = set {members, methods}"). To what extend do you have to be a linguist and/or a major contributor of Lojban (who I am not, not even a computer scientist) to achieve this goal? Do I have to wait for Lojban texts on computer science (or juridic texts, which is another area where I find Lojban very interesting) to be written before writing some myself or am I able to contribute?

Following these lines, here are some bullet points giving a more structured view of what I think would help me (I would be happy to help on all what is in my reach):

- lojban.org is confusing : main entry point to the internet is often a google search which brings you to pages that are not reachable from links in the left menu. Hard to understand what is up-to-date (I took me several weeks to find the last version of the grammar reference book, the grammar.300 page, the most up-to-date project page, etc.). Is discussion about article "lo" mentioned on one page integrated in reference grammar ? What is the final status on this question ?

- mailing list (only with respect to the fact that lojban.org is confusing) : seems to be the reference, but hard to extract the information (when looking for some more information on functions and mex, you may stumble upon a long exchange on subtle points on function gismu in Lojban, but I couldn't find simple examples which could complement the reference grammar).

- some texts on the "spirit" of Lojban (as there is be a "zen" of python programming language and various reference document by the founder and some major contributor to explain you how python is going to evolve, in which direction, what you could expect from the language, in which direction you are urged to think of improvements, theses are gathered in structured PEP (python enhancement proposal). In Lojban, there could be Lojban development guidelines : guidelines to build botanic words, guidelines to write juridic text, computer science text, guidelines for philosophy, etc. In a nutshell expert advice for normal people to contribute without wondering whether the fact they do not understand why a language without a metalinguistic negation is bad hinders them from developing the language or not.

- Lojban reference grammar written in Lojban, as there is for example a reference grammar for French written in French. This could be a good way to understand how Lojban deals with some somewhat circular reference we can see in dictionary or grammar book of a language written in this same language

- Lojban small texts on technical subjects where the need of non-ambiguity is naturally stronger than in a novel of a short story.

Thank you for reading all this and once again I'd be happy to work on one of this point!

Bruno Durin

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