Warning: written by a Lojban zealot. Bias is inevitable.
I would rate Lojban as one of the more difficult among constructed languages, but much easier than most natural languages. I have now (december 1998) studied Lojban for almost exactly one year, using small amounts of my spare time. I'd say that I've achieved a greater degree of proficiency than I had after my first year of English, and my first year of German, both which I were taught in school.
I find the basics of grammar very easy (learnt in a matter of hours), and vocabulary very difficult (there are about 2000 words to memorize). However, the vocabulary is just as difficult to learn for everyone, whereas for instance the vocaulary of Esperanto is easier for Latin-influenced European languages. This is why someone thinks that Lojban would make a better international language than Esperanto, hadn't Esperanto been given a 100 year head start.
But yes, it may be so that almost nobody speaks Lojban. The main reason
for this, is that the prospective competent speakers live so far away
from each other. There is, however, a fair amount of writing and
translating in Lojban going on. Check out the Lojban
list if you want to see some of it.
Lojban has several gismu for emotions such as hate (xebni), anger
(fengu), fear (terpa), love (prami), fondness (nelci), and lots others.
Additionally, the attitudinal system have short words, such as "ui",
"iu", "ii", "uu", "ua", "ue" and so on, for expressing common emotions.
If you have serious problems with some consonant clusters, and still
want to try to speak Lojban, you may try using so-called buffer vowels
in between the difficult consonants. This must be a vowel that doesn't
exist in Lojban, and it must be considerably shorter than ordinary,
Lojbanic vowels.
«Lojban is difficult to learn»
Of course it is! Isn't Your Favourite LanguageTM difficult?«I heard they were really proud of it and announced it in their newsletter when two of their best speakers had a 15 minute conversation» - «But nobody speaks Lojban!»
After a fair amount of searching, I discovered the origin of the "15
minute conversation" story. It seems that it was written by the
esperantist Don Harlow, in an article where he
is bashing just about all the other constructed languages in the world. The
author apparently heard this from a person from the the Loglan camp. Although
Loglan is related to Lojban (it can be considered "ancestral" to it),
they have now become mutually unintelligible. Furthermore, Lojban has a
far greater speaker mass than Loglan ever attained.«Since nobody speaks it, I don't want to learn it»
That's up to you. If you think language is a code in which one
formulates one's thoughts, stick with Chinese, English or Spanish in
order to maximize the size of your audience. If you think that other
kinds of languages may stimulate other kinds of thoughts, you may want
to give Lojban a try.
«Lojban is culturally neutral»
I don't think so. I can mention several examples of the alleged
"cultural neutrality" being compromised:
«You can't be irrational in Lojban»
Oh, yes you can! With certain exceptions, everything you say in Lojban
has to be expressed using formal logic, but the expression may still be
complete gibberish. "I have to kill you because you're black" in Lojban
is ".ei mi catra do ki'u le nu do xekri", but the Lojban version is
neither more or less rational than the English one.
«Lojban is a cold and emotionless language»
What criteria does a language have to meet to be warm and emotionful?«Lojban words are impossible to pronounce»
To you, they may be. People with different language backgrounds have
different problems when encountering Lojban. The consonant cluster "ml"
(as in "mlatu") is a problem to many Americans, but to people in Eastern
Europe, it comes out very naturally.«Lojban is only a bastardized version of Loglan»
I don't know. I can't afford Loglan dictionaries and teaching material,
so I'm unable to find out how today's Lojban compares to today's Loglan.
Arnt Richard Johansen,
arj@fix.no
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