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I recently discovered that there are a number of Lexicon Valley podcasts that I hadn't heard and have been working my way through them. Episode 33 was entitled The End of Ambiguity and dealt with an artificial language that was originally known as Loglan and is now called Lojban. The aim was to create a language in which ambiguous utterances are impossible and it is, or sounds to be from this podcast, insanely complex. Possibly literally insanely. To give an example from the podcast there are 25 different ways to say “and” in Lojban. In the sentence “John and Mary carried the box” there is one word for “and” if we mean together and a different word for “and” if we mean alternately. A third word is used in “John and Mary are friends.” where it means that considered jointly they are friends. The language, quite frankly, sounds nuts. I was intrigued enough that I shall be reading more about it later. Lojban as such wasn't the main point of interest for me. That came a few minutes from the end when I discovered that there is a Lojban translation of Alice In Wonderland. Of course I had to check if I could find one. And find one I did. Here is the opening paragraph. To me it doesn't even look like a language, it looks like an especially complicated cipher.
Who'd have thought that randomly listening to an old podcast would find me such a strange new version of my lifelong obsession. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | ||
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A small correction - Lojban, it seems, isn't actually the modern name for Loglan, it's another language developed from the same principles. Info can be found on Wikpediia. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Root words in Lojban are supposedly derived (by formula) from the 5 top languages in the world. Chinese throws a kind of wrench into the works. Lojban is one of the least interesting auxiliary languages I have run across. I heard the Loglan-Lojban schism was caused by a copyright dispute. The two roots in both language names are "logical" plus "language". —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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<Proofreader> |
Bob, you've been duped. While the story is about Alice, it is the Hawaiian equivalent of "Debbie Does Dallas" --"Alice Does Oahu." | ||
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I had no idea that you were fluent in Lojban, proof. That makes you very special. But we all knew that already. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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<Proofreader> |
I totally agree, said he, modestly. | ||
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I'll have to check to see if Shu has heard that podcast. He really likes Lexicon Valley. Do you have a link for that particular one, Bob? Could you figure out that passage from Alice in Wonderland? | |||
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http://www.slate.com/articles/...to_be_supremely.html And no, of course not. I don't think it would be possible to just "figure out" a lojban text as, in addition to the text it includes metatext bracketing functions that indicate how the text is to be understood... more like a computer programming language. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Q: How many Lojban speakers does it take to change a broken light bulb? A: Two. One to work out what to change it into and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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