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Anytime Lojban comes up I recommend taking a look at linguist Arika Okrent's book "Into the Land of Invented Languages". She learns several conlangs (constructe
by throwaway7645 9y ago
Anytime Lojban comes up I recommend taking a look at linguist Arika Okrent's book "Into the Land of Invented Languages". She learns several conlangs (constructed languages) during the book and has several chapters devoted to the history and her learning of Lojban and some of its pitfalls (some things take a lot of words to say). There's a reason why natural languages have so much ambiguity, so you don't have to write a novel to have a basic conversation. If you go to wikitongues on YouTube you'll see a prominent community member who can only read it and can't speak it...it isn't easy.
Edit: Lojban is ambiguous with how something is said, so when a speaker says something you should never misinterpret the words, but the meaning could be misinterpreted as I understand it. I'm no expert, but would love to see something like this take off.
- rumcajz 9y agoWhen it comes to book recommendations I would recommend Umberto Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language.
- throwaway7645 9y agoSpeaking of Larry Wall (creator of Perl) above, "the search for the perfect language" is his favorite book I believe.
- zephyrfalcon 9y ago"""I recommend taking a look at linguist Arika Okrent's book "Into the Land of Invented Languages""" I used to have that book... I didn't think it was very good. I wanted to learn more about the various conlangs, but instead the author mostly focused on their creators, and then especially their idiosyncrasies and quirks. For those who want to know more about conlangs, I would recommend "The Language Construction Kit" by Mark Rosenfelder.
- anthonybullard 9y agoThe Language Construction Kit is phenomenal and played a huge part in developing my love of conlangs as well as linguistics in general.
- throwaway7645 9y agoThe Language Construction Kit is great from everything I've read. Yes her book is more on the history & pro/cons of various conlangs mixed with examples...etc. It's not supposed to teach you Klingon, Lojban, Esperanto, and several others all in one book.
- sriku 9y agoAn aside - the brilliant Star Trek episode Darmok [1] shows the importance of the shared cultural context in which communication happens. [2] is a snippet of the episode where the crew is perplexed by the "language" of the "Tamarians". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wzr74d7TI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wzr74d7TI