So, I’m going to give a talk about Lojban in a convention here, in my town, Bahía Blanca, called “Jornadas del Sur“. I’ll give it this Monday at 10 o’clock (GMT -3). I hope we have a video streaming of the talk; if we do, I’ll let you know here.

I’m preparing the slides right now (in Spanish, obviously…). I’ll upload them somewhere and let you know, when I finish them. (It’s going to be under Creative Commons Licence, as this blog.)

For this, I used L^aT_eX (for more information, you can read this); I parsed a XML file exported from jbovlaste with a python script. You can download the book here (go ahead; it’s under Creative Commons, like this blog).

And the script is under GPL v3.0 You can download the code here.

I promise to keep learning Lojban as soon as I can!

In previous posts, I’ve talked about some kinds of words, like brivla and cmene; now is the time to talk about the other big group: cmavo. I’ve already used them; lo, le, mi… and they act as structure words. They do not need to have a particular meaning, though they modify what they have around. They can be recognized easely because (extracted from What is Lojban?):

• may be a single syllable
• never contain a consonant cluster of any type, whether or not y is counted
• end in a vowel
• need not be penultimately stressed, though they often are if they have more than one syllable

All cmavo display one of the following letter patterns, where C stands for a consonant, and V stands for a vowel:

• V
• VV
• V’V
• CV
• CVV
• CV’V

A small group of cmavo are used to represent what we feel, in general, and in particular with what we say. This are called attitudinals (cnivla in lojban), and are can be found here. For example:

• .a’a: attentive.
• .ui: happy.
• .ue: surprise. :O
• .u’i: ammusement.

And many more…

I can use it alone, and they’ll describe how I’m feeling. For example, if I say just “.ui“, I’m happy

They are also useful combined with a bridi. If they are before the whole bridi, they’ll describe how you feel about the whole predicate. If I say:

.ui do klama

means that you’re coming (or going, or came, or going to come, or… well, you understand) and I’m happy about it.

If I put the attitudinal in the middle of a bridi, they modified the word (or valsi, in lojban) inmediatly before it. So, in the sentence:

do .ui klama

You’re coming, and I’m happy that YOU (and no other) are coming.

Combined with this attitudinals, we can use some attachments that can modify what the attitudinal means. For example, nai. This cmavo turns the last attitudinal into its opposite meaning. For example .uinai is the opposite of happiness, or sadness.

This emoticons are not there just for fun; one interesting way of learning the attitudinals is to start replacing everyday emoticons, for this new words. They claim that this attitudinals are really powerfull… so I’m going to try it and see if it’s true.

In fact, there is a page for Cniglic, that’s is a subset of Lojban. People there comment about some stuff (in English), and with attitudinals, write what they feel. You can visit here.

Of course, I can’t forget the most widely known conlang ever existed (as it was commented in the past post): Esperanto. It’s by far the conlang with the largest community. According to the wiki:

Total speakers Native: 200 to 2000 (1996, est.);
Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million (in about 115 countries)

That’s just astonishing.

It was created in 1887 (!!!!) by L. L. Zamenhof, to be an international auxiliary language. He took many elements from the European languages (syntax, vocabulary, etc.) to develop it.

However, it’s criticized partially because of that: it’s not that culturally neutral, as it has not elements from oriental languages.

There are a few languages with this same objective. After the invention of Esperanto, other languages like Ido, Interlingua, and Afrihili (a language to be used in all Africa).

Of course, not every conlang was intended to be an international auxiliary language; some were invented as a scientific experiment (most of them based on the Sapir Whorf’s hypothesis). Lojban it’s one example, though it can be used as an auxiliary as well.

Sonja Elen Kisa is a linguist who developed Toki Pona (the funny yellow no-eyed guy there => it’s its logo), based on Taoist philosophy, trying to be as minimalist as possible. It has only 120 words, that represent simple concepts. It’s grammar is really simple (just a few rules), and more complex concepts can be achieved combining the basic words (for example, Toki means language and Pona, good). And is really easy to learn!

She has also designed Oou. The reason for developing it is unclear to me… it’s just insane. It has no consonants at all, and 11 vowels. It has only a few words (each one has several meanings), and a really strange alphabet. Here are some examples (with their corresponding meanings) extracted from its page:

[]*_ []=!&_ ?
I eat trees.
You help trees.
I eat the sofa.
You help the sofa.
etc.

=_ ^^/~ ?
I love you.
You love me.
I love myself.
I avoid myself.
I avoid you.
I flatten myself.
I flatten you.
etc.

The first ones I met were, as a fan of Tolkien’s universe, Quenya and Sindarin (between many others he developed). The elvish languages are as beautiful as the elves themselves, as Tolkien wanted when he started developing this languages. Here you can hear a recording of Tolkien reciting the poem “Namárië“.

They have also a beautiful alphabet, called Tengwar, as you can see in this Quenya example:

The aim of this languages is purely artistic. They were used in literature, (fantasy, in this case), but there are many constructed languages in science fiction too. The most famous perhaps, is Klingon, of the Star Trek’s series. There is a really significant number of Klingon speakers, and you can also set your Google language to it. There were many others, like Na’vi (of James Cameron’s Avatar).

Other people created languages with other ends. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is the reason of many of the scientific ones (including lojban). I hope I’ll write a post about that hypothesis in the future.

Suzette Haden Elgin created Láadan (that’s the link to wikipedia, this is the official page), a language designed to be better in communicating and expresing ideas and views of woman. It has many words to be unambigous when refering to emotions about what someone is saying. It was also used in science-fiction series Native Tongue.

This is extracted from their official page:

I became aware [...] of the feminist hypothesis that existing human languages are inadequate to express the perceptions of women. This intrigued me because it had a built-in paradox: if it is true, the only mechanism available to women for discussing the problem is the very same language(s) alleged to be inadequate for the purpose.

In the next post, I’ll be commenting about other languages (artificial or not).

co’o lo tcidu

(I’m really busy to be studing lojban, but I didn’t stopped!)

This week has been a busy one, since my girlfriend came and spent a few days here

In the IRC channel, kribacr told me that I’ve learnt a large chunk of the lojban grammar (all I put here and some other things). So, it’s time to slow down with the reading and get used to chat. Also, it’s a good moment to learn as many vocabulary as I can.

For that last point, I don’t know yet where to start. I could use the Start.fm lessons, but they are still under development. Ninjbo suggested me the lessons in Quizlet.com; they don’t have audio, but a large amount of lessons.

Ninjbo also started a blog, explaining his weird method of learning huge (really huge) amounts of vocabulary in a few days. *clap* for him .

A few days ago I met with a game: “lo do ckiku ma zvati” (“Where are your keys?”). This is the lojban version of Where are your keys?, a language fluency game; a proyect of Alan Post. I’ll be trying it for sure

Also, I started to help the community. I’ve done some translations to Spanish on the wiki (like this page), met jbovlaste (the lojban dictionary editing system) and started making entries in Spanish too. There are a lot of Spanish entries by now, so I’m enlarging the list, voting other translations, etc. It can also export the dictionary of the languages in it to LaTeX, and XML, so I think I might do something with that in the future.

Finally, my dear girlfriend asked me to start teaching her Lojban so I’m really happy!

But first, some random vocabulary I’m going to use:

• klama: x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5.
• blanu: x1 is blue.
• bloti: x1 is a boat/ship/vessel [vehicle] for carrying x2, propelled by x3.
• karce: x1 is a car/automobile/truck/van (a wheeled motor vehicle) for carrying x2, propelled by x3.

klama has 5 sumti to fill, but it’s not necessary to fill them all; like in this sentence:

mi klama lo zdani

Meaning “I go (or come) to a house“. The bridi doesn’t specify which house, when this happens (if I’m going right now, or I did it in the past, or if I’ll go); it’s open for interpretation, as well as the unfilled sumti (it isn’t specified from where I’m going, which route I am taking or how I’m).

If I want to specify I’m going by car, I have to use x5, but x3 and x4 has to be left blank. I have several ways for doing this:

1. mi klama lo zdani zo’e zo’e lo karce
2. mi klama lo zdani fu lo karce
3. lo karce ku xe te klama lo zdani mi

The first one use the word zo’e, which is used to specify the sumti is left blank. The second tags lo karce with fu, that specifies the following sumti is the fifth (fa does the same but for x1, fe for x2, and so). The third is just some sick and unnatural way (no one would say that that way — it’s just for educational reasons); te and xe modifies the selbri and switches the places of the sumti. (For more information about this, you can read the section Conversion (“se-word brivla”) in this chapter of “What is Lojban?“.)

What about giving more information of one of the sumti? There are lots of ways; I don’t know all them yet.

Imagine I’m going in a blue boat instead of a car (it would be really cool…). Then, I’d say:

mi klama lo zdani zo’e lo blanu bloti

blanu modifies bloti, making a tanru, which is formed when two or more gismu are next each other.

I don’t know what you think, but I think I’ve learned enough to “evolve“. I understand the basis of Lojban grammar, I know many words, and I can introduce myself (.i mi’e leos.). I chose a dolphin to be my new level!

Learning the grammar of a language is always dreadful (sometimes even in our first language). However, Lojban seems to be easier than natural languages.

(Only for those who studied logic, like myself, in Computer Science.) Lojban is based in predicate calculus. If you don’t know it, or you don’t remember it, it’s something like this:

Suppose that we want to say: “It’s my house” . In predicate calculus, we have to create a predicate named house (or the name we want) with an arity of two (for programmers: this ones are like arguments in a function or a procedure). In this two slots, we are going to place the two elements that are related with a relationship called house; “it” and “me” (the one who owns and lives in the house):

The order of the elements it’s important, so we have to decide the role of the elements in each slot. In the  example, the first slot refers which is the house in the relationship, and the second, who lives there.

In Lojban, the assertion can be said like:

ti zdani mi

Being:

• ti: It (or the thing I’m talking about, perhaps even pointing).
• zdani: Without getting deeper, a house.
• mi: me (pretty much the same).

zdani is the predicate (or selbri) in this sentence (or bridi), and the other two are the arguments (or sumti).

The selbri can have from 1 to 5 arguments, but they don’t need to be always filled. For each word (or gismu), each sumti has their meaning. For example, for zdani, according to the Lojban Dictionary:

zdani [zda] gismu
x1 is a nest/house/lair/den/[home] of/for x2 .

X1 and X2 are the two sumti that can be filled, as I did.

This is what I see can be complicated from this language: remember the vocabulary, and also the meaning of the arguments. Luckily, they seem to have a pattern, and it’s not necessary to know them all always:

1. The first place is often the person or thing who does something or is something (in Lojban there is no grammatical difference between ‘doing’ and ‘being’).
2. If someone or something has something done to them, he/she/it is usually in the second place.
3. to places (destinations) nearly always come before from places (origins).
4. Less-used places come towards the end. These tend to be things like ‘by standard’, ‘by means’ or ‘made of’.

(Extracted from Lojban for Beginners.)

This might be the hardest post until now, but it’s has the basis of the language. It’s not the intention to learn reading this blog, but I explain a few things to show my development, to show it’s not that hard and to help myself in the process of learning. To learn, you can read the books or ask for help in the IRC channel; they’ve been really kind with me .

While I still hadn’t decided to start learning, I read some interesting facts and some of the history of lojban. I think most of my usual readers (I can’t stop thanking you!) know this facts, but I’d like to write a little post about it.

Lojban it’s about 50 years old. It was first called Loglan, and described by Dr. James Cooke Brown. It was first “conceived as a means to examine the influence of language on the speaker’s thought (an assumption known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)” (extracted from the wiki — I’m going to get deeper in that hypothesis in a future post). Brown started to claim copyright, but some of the loglanist weren’t happy with this, so they separated and started a new project, Lojban, and formed the Logical Language Group (LLG).

Lojban had the basis grammar of Loglan, but different vocabulary. And all it’s grammar and vocabulary it’s open for everyone who wants to take a look .

About 1997, the language was baselined and frozen; The Complete Lojban Language was publicated, in order to let the number of speakers grow. This “freeze” expired in 2002, so the lojbanist now can construct new words (as long as they follow the rules) that can and might be added to the Lojban dictionary.

There are lots of projects under development, e.g. a text-book for new students (and teachers). And I think I’ve read somewhere that the language it’s going to be frozen again…

And about my learning process… a few comments:

• I started to read some lessons that are under development (in a wave) that timos recommended. As he said, it’s a little bit crude, but really useful too.
• I entered the IRC channel (#lojban and ##ckule on irc.freenode.net) and I’ve registered leom as my nick (leos was taken ). So if you see me online, I would love if we could chat!
• I’ll be away for a week more or less. I’m traveling to a really beautiful place called San Martin de los Andes (in Argentina, obviously ), so wish me luck!

Names in lojban are called cmene (remember that c it’s pronounced like sh), and they have to follow some rules:

1. End in a consonant.
2. Followed by a pause (period).
3. It’s not permited to have the words la, lai or doi embedded in them.

Some names can be lojbanised without any changes. Unfortunately, it’s not my case; my name (either Leo or Leonardo) ends in a vowel and my surname (Molas) contains la in it. This isn’t really nice for me to change it, but it has to be done.

Capital letters aren’t used in lojban as in English or other languages. Usually, words in lojban are stressed on the last-but-one syllable; if a non-lojbanic word (like a name) is stressed in other syllable, you can capitalize it.

So, my name won’t start as usual with a capital letter. I wonder why this little difference. I think it’s because there is no more reason to use them, but to distinguish names from other words. Nevertheless, when we speak, we can’t “hear” them. In the other hand, Lojban stablishes that names end in consonants, and are followed by a pause; we actually can hear names with this.

From all this, I think my “names” would be:

• Leo: leos.
• Leonardo: leonardos.
• Leo Molas: leos.molys.

I don’t like how molys. sounds . (The y, called “schwa”, it’s an unstressed vowel, and sounds like the a in above.)

kribacr was the first one writing a comment in this blog (thank you so much! and thanks to xorxes and stela too!), and started it with the lojbanic sentence:

coi .li,o.molas. mi’e .kribacr.

At first, I didn’t understand it, but it’s clear that my name is there, and so is his. He might have written mine “li,o” because in English it is pronounced more like a /LEE-o/, but in Spanish is /LE-o/.

According to the Lojban dictionary (you can download the pdf here), coi is “hello” and mi’e is a kind “I am”; so, if I want to introduce myself, I’d say:

mi’e leos.molys.

– EDIT –

As many commented here, there is a new way (an unofficial one… yet) to “translate” names into lojban, without the ugly deformations.

I’ve stopped by the IRC channel (#lojban at the irc.freenode.net server — for the first time ) and I met some nice people willing to help (even myself that I’m far far far away from an “advanced” student).

As timos, lindar and xorxes commented here, starting the name with a pause (the dot “.”) solves the “la/lai/doi” problem (thanks to komfn at the IRC channel for this). Also, I can avoid putting an “s” after leo in .leos.molas. if I change the dot for a comma. As I would like to be called just Leo among friends, in Lojban I’d just be called .leos., so to keep it always that way, when I also say my family name, I would say .leos.molas. .

In conclusion, I’d like to introduce myself saying:

mi’e .leos.molas.