Subject: Re: [lojban] Another question: Loglan/Lojban

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 13:32:30 EDT

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.