Spehlin and Phonetics


Latin doesn't meet most requirements: ideal language need to be as culturally neutral as possible (Latin is a dead language but with a lot of history and heritage in a lot of western languages), easy, without ambiguities and irregular cases that most natural languages have, and it must be more powerful than natural languages in a logical way.

Lojban is the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Lojban_as_a_speakable_logic

Of course, you were joking when you said Latin :)

I disagree. Given current reality, a language like Lojban would get better traction if it took all of its vocabulary wholesale from English, the pre-existing international language that at least a billion people already have significant knowledge of. With the way it is now, everyone has to learn much new vocabulary.
 
As nice as a language as Lojban is, it wouldn't take people long to let it derail into being the next natural language. There are too many too dumb and too many too uninterested to learn their native language correctly.
 
As nice as a language as Lojban is, it wouldn't take people long to let it derail into being the next natural language. There are too many too dumb and too many too uninterested to learn their native language correctly.

It's not necessarily just a case of being dumb or uninterested. I have worked with many intelligent, conscientious people with whom it apparently behooves them not to learn to distinguish "their", "they're" and "there".

On a different note, there will always be political motivations behind language and its use. A recent example being the furore over the use of personal pronouns in the gender debate within Canada.
 
@ClockworkCoder So you're saying, in addition to the sufficing first two groups of language rapists there are the creative ones - those who intent changes?
 
@ClockworkCoder So you're saying, in addition to the sufficing first two groups of language rapists there are the creative ones - those who intent changes?

Absolutely. There's are dangers in attempting to keep a language "pure" while it's in active use. People will always have different motivations behind their use of language, which is what also makes it so interesting.
 
I disagree. Given current reality, a language like Lojban would get better traction if it took all of its vocabulary wholesale from English, the pre-existing international language that at least a billion people already have significant knowledge of. With the way it is now, everyone has to learn much new vocabulary.

If we think a big part of that billion (no natural speakers) can't pronounce nor understand when hearing all that 12 vowel sounds in English, and if we think of all that English natural speakers who can't write correctly (becasuse English are two different languages, one spoken and other written), then that billion is some smaller :)

Years ago I read a letter from a natural English speaker: I was shocked how an adult middle-class person having English as mother language and living all its time in a country/area with English language can write so bad. In that letter I observed lots of errors. This is the problem with a language broken in two.

When I was child watching US/EN movies I didn't understand why some times they say "SPELL" and they had difficulties with it. I though it was ridiculous as in my language spelling is directly, a piece of cake: there is like a 95% direct correspondence between written and spoken language. Then I didn't know the problem with English and the difficulties they had spelling a language broken in two, one written and other spoken.

On other side, I think the way to get words in Lobjan:
The list of source languages used for the algorithm was limited to the six most widely spoken languages as of 1987—Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. This resulted in root words being in their phonetic form a relatively equal mixture of English and Mandarin, with lesser influences from the other four.
is better than your idea oft getting all words from English as your proposal would be unacceptable for most world population.

But don't worry English will continue to be the standard international language, and someday (surely I will be to old, at best) that role will be transfered not to a PERFECT ARTIFICIAL language like Lobjan, but to a natural language like Mandarin Chinese. Then we will laugh remembering how easy it was to learn written English, while trying to learn thousands and thousands of strange Han characters :)
Chinese can have a great time then :)

[doublepost=1535547749,1535547367][/doublepost]
I want to learn Latin.

Just DO IT :)
[doublepost=1535548642][/doublepost]
As nice as a language as Lojban is, it wouldn't take people long to let it derail into being the next natural language. There are too many too dumb and too many too uninterested to learn their native language correctly.

I think you are right ("too many uninterested to learn their native language correctly": this is really sad, but there are lots of people in that way).

But I don't see the problem with an artificial language: it is 100% specified, so you can speak/use it bad (as you can do with natural languages, even with your mother language, or you can do incorrect arithmetic), but they can't change the artificial language in the same way they can't change an ISO specification or the ASCII character table. The other way, to change natural languages, nor only is a possibility but a reality: natural languages are constantly evolving/changing, and the problem for languages so big like English or Spanish is even worse: they change differently in different areas.

On other side an international standard language doesn't replace your natural/mother language: it is other language different from natural languages, easier to learn (100% regular but even more powerful), without ambiguity (in the case of Lojban), that you can use to communicate with other people in a precise way and in equality (as it is no mother for anyone).
 
@oskda One has a choice: take the spelled version of the English word, take the spoken version of the English word or take some easier to pronounce version of the spoken version of the English word.

As for it being "unacceptable" to base all the vocabulary on English: a billion people would already have a large part of this vocabulary, while in current lojban there is no obvious rule (it is random) for where any particular word came from so even those who are Chinese will probably not make the connection to a lojban word taken from Chinese as, after mangling to fit within lojban's phonetic/phonemic constraints (such as the removal of tones) and with the ever-present possibility of any particular word being a "false friend" there is no way to guess that the word means the same as a similar word in your language or is just another coincidental word.

If all knew that all words were taken from English (perhaps after phonemic and therefore spelling transformation) then it would be easy for the billion to guess what a large amount of the words mean when first seeing them (exceptions: "their", "they're" and "there" in many common dialects).

As a fun example of such a spelling transformation (though not entirely phonemic or alphabetic) consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundSpel :
It was on the ferst dae of the nue yeer the anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that the moeshun of the planet Neptune, the outermoest of all planets that wheel about the Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in the reejon of the perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found the intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that the nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum the orderly progres of the planets.
 
As a fun example of such a spelling transformation (though not entirely phonemic or alphabetic) consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundSpel :
It was on the ferst dae of the nue yeer the anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that the moeshun of the planet Neptune, the outermoest of all planets that wheel about the Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in the reejon of the perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found the intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that the nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum the orderly progres of the planets.
Sounds Scottish to me.
 
nah, not Scots. I mean just vowels - like "ferst", "frum". Maybe i mix that up with another accent.?
 
@oskda One has a choice: take the spelled version of the English word, take the spoken version of the English word or take some easier to pronounce version of the spoken version of the English word.

As for it being "unacceptable" to base all the vocabulary on English: a billion people would already have a large part of this vocabulary, while in current lojban there is no obvious rule (it is random) for where any particular word came from so even those who are Chinese will probably not make the connection to a lojban word taken from Chinese as, after mangling to fit within lojban's phonetic/phonemic constraints (such as the removal of tones) and with the ever-present possibility of any particular word being a "false friend" there is no way to guess that the word means the same as a similar word in your language or is just another coincidental word.

If all knew that all words were taken from English (perhaps after phonemic and therefore spelling transformation) then it would be easy for the billion to guess what a large amount of the words mean when first seeing them (exceptions: "their", "they're" and "there" in many common dialects).

As a fun example of such a spelling transformation (though not entirely phonemic or alphabetic) consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundSpel :


1/ You don't understand that if you try to construct an INTERNATIONAL and NEUTRAL artificial language you can't get all (or near all) words from English. You must get them from a bigger number of very important languages. And even in some cases it is better to invent some words as no one on them is ideal, or to mix words from different languages to form other so in this way it is more common to them (not only to one).

2/ If it is true that today English is spoken, usually bad spoken by lots of people (more for foreigners , but not only for them but too for natural speakers as English is very wide and they spoke it in different ways), more true it is that it ISN'T an ideal language (in a grammar nor in semantic way).

3/ If you get all words (or near all) in Lojban from English, people would end ruining it trying to use it as English or a mix of English and Lojban, and that isn't the Lojban purpose.

4/ "false friend" words exist between English and other western languages (for example between Spanish and English there is a lot of false friends words).

4/ Even if you try to use English for near all words, you find it is far from ideal, as there are words too similar in English, or simply they don't fit in a logical simple but true powerful language.

Simply Lojban is a NEW language, nor a mutilated English.

Sometimes it is better to make a new building from ground.

For me, if I would learn Lojban, it would be easier if all English words would be used, as I know a lot of them (at least in written form), but that would serve bad to Lojban spirit.

SoundSpel may be a good idea to transform English (but for sure it won't be successful [1]), but not for a new simply logical artificial neutral and really powerful language.

Of course nor SoundSpel nor Lojban (or other artificial languages) will have real success: we will continue to use natural languages as Lingua franca and sometime (it may be a lot of decades, even some centuries from today) English will be replaced for other natural language with the same problems today English offer, or even worse (imagine for example Chineses like Lingua franca, with its Han characters :D ).

[1]: SoundSpel idea isn't unknown for me: in Spanish there is like a 95% bidirectional correlation between spoken and written language, but for that small differences (for example B and V are pronounced exactly the same from some centuries ago, so people sometimes write incorrectly one in place of other) and there has been proposal to modify written language so that correlation be 100%.
 
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