4 ms·

I've always wondered about the way predicate words are chosen in Loglan and Lojban, i.e. maximizing a weighted sum of phonemes common to the candidate word and

I've always wondered about the way predicate words are chosen in Loglan and Lojban, i.e. maximizing a weighted sum of phonemes common to the candidate word and the words in widely spoken natural languages. The only English speakers who would recognize "blanu" as corresponding to "blue" are those who know something about those conlangs, and I bet the same could be said for Chinese speakers and "lan". Esperanto is criticized by some as Eurocentric, but at least some people will recognize the vocabulary.

ScottBurson 11y ago
As an English speaker who once spoke a little Loglan (the 1978 dialect!), I think you're mistaken. Knowing "blue" definitely helps in remembering "blanu". Occasionally there was a word that didn't take a lot of its phonemes from English, and those were definitely harder to learn. Obviously the benefit is going to be smaller if you don't speak one of the major source languages, but it still seems like a reasonable strategy to me for selecting vocabulary in an artificial language.