tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 30 11:35:16 1996
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Re: The FAQ section 3.5 -- charghwI' !?!
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>Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:54:58 -0800
>From: Terry Donnelly <[email protected]>
>>
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't lojban supposed to be unambiguous
>> and completely *in*telligible?
>>
>> -- ghunchu'wI'
>>
>The last time I read the Lojban FAQ on the WWW, they were boasting that
>they think they have *one* member fluent in Lojban (by which I guess they
>mean no one else can understand them).
Fluent? I don't know about "fluent." I know Bob LeChevalier can on a good
day generate spontaneous Lojban utterances, as can his wife. So can Nick
Nicholas, or at least he could, once. Hell, once, I could, though I'm out
of practice badly these days (Nick and I were/are figures in the Lojban
community to extents somewhat comparable to what we are in the Klingon
community... whatever that's worth).
>Lojban is supposed to be *logically* unambiguous, but by this they mean
>formal, mathematical logic. It's a far cry from the way people actually
>speak. Lojban seems to break language down into its
>constituent elements, but humans are accustomed to using shortcuts that
>combine these elements. It's very hard (for me, anyway) to do that sort
>of linguistic analysis on the fly.
But it does wonderful things to your brain when you work at it. :)
>Actually, another problem with Lojban is that every single word has its
>unique pattern of predicates that can be used with it. It makes for a
>very difficult vocabulary: not only must you learn themeanings of
>thewords, but also the other words that can accompany it and their proper
>pattern. (Ironically, not unlike what charghwI' is asking us to do with
>{jatlh}, et al.)
A pattern of the arguments, actually. It's less daunting than it seems, in
practice... but only slightly less. You rarely wind up using more than two
or three of the possible five "numbered" argument-slots. It still gets
pretty scary. Then again, it does help pin down the meanings of your words
(as relationships among some number of arguments) better.
ObtlhIngan: toH, HIja', DIvI' Hol rurbe' "Lojban." "Logic" lo'qu' 'e'
nIDba', 'ej chaq jatlhlu'DI', Qatlh. 'ach lI'bej, 'ej 'oH lo'laH vay'.
'ach pab qImHa'nIS'a' tlhIngan Hol, jatlhwI'Daj joq? "toH, Hol wIlo'qu'
'ej wI'lo'qu'taHvIS mIwDaj DIghoj" ja' nuv puS... 'ach nuq mIw ghoj?
tlhIngan Hol mIw ghoj'a'? pagh HolDaj mIw (DIvI' Hol mIw) pab tlhIngan Hol
'e' luraD'a'? (hmmm... "HolDaj mIw pabmeH tlhIngan Hol luraD'a'?"...?
DIch vIghajbe'). "lughba'qu'bogh mIw DIpab" ja'... 'ej ngeDlaw'. 'ach
ngeD jatlhmeH Qu' neH. qelDI' wa' nuv, wa' "lughba'bogh mIw" tu', 'ach
qelDI' latlh, latlh tu'bej.
I'ts easy to SAY "just USE the language and it will be obvious what to do
with it, don't mess with rules," but that really means you're simply going
to be imposing your own biases (from your native language) instead of
considering that maybe not all languages follow the same path (they
don't). Linguists have been grappling with what languages are and how they
do what they do for centuries; these questions are NOT simple or obvious.
~mark
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