4 ms·

There was once a lack of other people who spoke Esperanto. Yet it flourished. There was once a lack of other people who spoke Klingon, and yet it flourished.

by gnosis 15y ago

There was once a lack of other people who spoke Esperanto. Yet it flourished. There was once a lack of other people who spoke Klingon, and yet it flourished. There was (at around the turn of the 20th century) a lack of people who spoke Hebrew, and yet it too flourished and now there's a whole nation of people who speak it. Lack of people who speak the language is always a problem for any artificial language... at first. Some manage to overcome this problem. Others don't. The interesting question is why this is the case, and what can be done about it.

JulianMorrison 15y ago
It helps to have, respectively: early 20th century internationalist idealists, geeky star trek fans, or a newly imposed nation needing a ready made myth of identity, as a constituency of early adopters.
ColinWright 15y ago
Esperanto is so similar to any other romance language it's almost trivial to pick up. I can decode a page of it fairly easily. Klingon had a huge body of enthusiasts. Lojban has no entry level material that is actually engaging. We need a large number of articles about interesting things, but written at the language level of a four year old. With nothing interesting to read, and no other reason to learn other than "it's interesting" it's having a hard time growing. It needs entry level interesting material.
- loup-vaillant 15y ago
  I may have an Idea: could we try to bootsrap lojban by writing something akin to Guy Steele's growing a language? Or is lojban so orthogonal that expressing most of its words and grammar in terms of a smaller kernel is impossible? Sure, that would be quite recursive. But you wouldn't read lojban if you weren't interested in it anyway, so it's bound to be interesting.
- WildUtah 15y ago
  Yeah, agreed. In fact, the strongest headwind Esperanto constantly faces is Spanish. There's already a romance language with absolutely systematic spelling, easy pronunciation, simple grammar, and few irregularities. It's already the second most widely spoken language on the planet, it has mountains of interesting and elementary material, and there are lots of interesting people whom you can meet only by speaking it. It's hard for any rationalized romance language to gain traction against that.
a3_nm 15y ago
Klingon flourished? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#cite_ref-0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#cite_ref-0 indicates an estimated 12 speakers.
andrewflnr 15y ago
Fair enough. But my point is that it's premature to say that being logical doesn't matter (much), or especially that it's a point against Lojban's adoption, as the comment implied. Surely there are other reasons.
- DanielStraight 15y ago
  Being logical may matter... but I don't think it's the most important feature, as I said. Creating a perfectly logical language doesn't make it obviously valuable to most people. The underlying premise of Lojban is, more or less, that the problem with natural languages is that they're too illogical. Lojban fixed that problem and, relatively speaking, no one cared. Lots of people hear of Esperanto and decide to pick it up. Almost no one hears of Lojban and picks up. Lots of people are fluent in Esperanto. Perhaps no one is fluent in Lojban. Granted Esperanto had a huge head-start, but I don't think you can attribute its relative success entirely to that factor. Lojban is still missing something, despite being perfectly logical. English, on the other hand, is flourishing despite being extremely illogical. English is one of the most successful and least logical languages on Earth. Lojban is one of the least successful and most logical languages on Earth. "Correlation does not imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'." - Randall Munroe All I was trying to say is that being logical is not a panacea.
elemeno 15y ago
Hebrew isn't such a great example. The language was still in use as a liturgical language and for reading religious texts, it just wasn't being used (or at least, was barely being used) as a modern spoken language.

by gnosis 15y ago

JulianMorrison 15y ago

It helps to have, respectively: early 20th century internationalist idealists, geeky star trek fans, or a newly imposed nation needing a ready made myth of identity, as a constituency of early adopters.

ColinWright 15y ago

Esperanto is so similar to any other romance language it's almost trivial to pick up. I can decode a page of it fairly easily. Klingon had a huge body of enthusiasts. Lojban has no entry level material that is actually engaging. We need a large number of articles about interesting things, but written at the language level of a four year old. With nothing interesting to read, and no other reason to learn other than "it's interesting" it's having a hard time growing. It needs entry level interesting material.

loup-vaillant 15y ago
I may have an Idea: could we try to bootsrap lojban by writing something akin to Guy Steele's growing a language? Or is lojban so orthogonal that expressing most of its words and grammar in terms of a smaller kernel is impossible? Sure, that would be quite recursive. But you wouldn't read lojban if you weren't interested in it anyway, so it's bound to be interesting.
WildUtah 15y ago
Yeah, agreed. In fact, the strongest headwind Esperanto constantly faces is Spanish. There's already a romance language with absolutely systematic spelling, easy pronunciation, simple grammar, and few irregularities. It's already the second most widely spoken language on the planet, it has mountains of interesting and elementary material, and there are lots of interesting people whom you can meet only by speaking it. It's hard for any rationalized romance language to gain traction against that.

a3_nm 15y ago

Klingon flourished? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#cite_ref-0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#cite_ref-0 indicates an estimated 12 speakers.

andrewflnr 15y ago

Fair enough. But my point is that it's premature to say that being logical doesn't matter (much), or especially that it's a point against Lojban's adoption, as the comment implied. Surely there are other reasons.

DanielStraight 15y ago
Being logical may matter... but I don't think it's the most important feature, as I said. Creating a perfectly logical language doesn't make it obviously valuable to most people. The underlying premise of Lojban is, more or less, that the problem with natural languages is that they're too illogical. Lojban fixed that problem and, relatively speaking, no one cared. Lots of people hear of Esperanto and decide to pick it up. Almost no one hears of Lojban and picks up. Lots of people are fluent in Esperanto. Perhaps no one is fluent in Lojban. Granted Esperanto had a huge head-start, but I don't think you can attribute its relative success entirely to that factor. Lojban is still missing something, despite being perfectly logical. English, on the other hand, is flourishing despite being extremely illogical. English is one of the most successful and least logical languages on Earth. Lojban is one of the least successful and most logical languages on Earth. "Correlation does not imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'." - Randall Munroe All I was trying to say is that being logical is not a panacea.

elemeno 15y ago

Hebrew isn't such a great example. The language was still in use as a liturgical language and for reading religious texts, it just wasn't being used (or at least, was barely being used) as a modern spoken language.