So for about the last 5 days, I've been looking into learning a second language called lojban. lojban is a "constructed language" or conlang that was intentionally engineered, like Esperanto, only from the ground up by taking elements of 6 of the world's most widely spoken languages and making it's own formal grammar. The result is a logically constructed language that some if not most in the world could learn in a matter of weeks. It never really took off and has been carried by an international community who've made it a hobby. What's interesting about lojban is that it's built to be extremely simple, culturally neutral and unambiguous. That means that there will be no idioms or metaphors, homonyms or vague words to be misunderstood, but also a minimum of utterances to convey thought and everything is defined by context. It's also just as much an experiment in thought as a mission to break through language barriers. There's something that I haven't looked much into called The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that was roughly described as a theory that whatever language you use the most growing up has an effect on your thought process. So, learning to think in lojban allegedly teaches you to be more logical. That's not to say that's it's totally devoid of emotion, it's exactly the opposite. It does a better job at expressing emotion through speech and a FAR better job expressing it through text than English could ever hope to.

I made this thread for two reasons: 1, to bring this to Vizzed to see if anyone else was interested in trying it and 2, to get some help that understands language better than I do....

I've had it explained to me 4 different ways, each time a little simpler, and still don't fully grasp the concept. I was wondering if someone else who is interested in this would be willing to learn it and help me lean in the process because I can't learn strictly from reading, I have to be able to ask someone who understands painfully obvious questions lol. Linked below is all of the learning material that I've been using, all of which are on the official website:

lojban wave lessons

"The Crash Course"

I've also been reading through a PDF on the official site, but I can't remember where it was. I have it downloaded. You can also find a couple English to lojban dictionaries online.

I enjoy languages and communication, both written and verbal. I'm a native English speaker but I've had Spanish immersion since I did work in Honduras and Nicaragua for several years. Unfortunately my Castillano Spanish I learned in high school didn't do that much good when it came to Central American Spanish.

My wife is Japanese and she speaks Japanese first. I am pretty good with the verbal portion. My hiragana is atrocious.

Lastly, I work in Dearborn, MI, and I'm learning Arabic. I'll never write it but the inflection and speaking is challenging. It's hard because the nuances of words change with the sounds. There's a soft ch, a hard ch, a guttural ch, a floating ch, and they are all different words when you put them together. It's very subtle.


Basically, I find it impossible for anyone to learn a language, which the exception of programming, in a few weeks. You can learn some stock phrases, you can count, you can greet people, but immersive conversation takes years of practice, hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. Our native languages influence so much of our accent and pronunciation, even simplistic verbiage for speaking doesn't mean you can learn it that quickly.

So, for example, having no homonyms? There are only so many phonetics the human tongue can produce. All languages have homonyms. Vague words? That means you have to have specific words to every situation. It's like when you hear Eskimos or Inuits have 30 or more words for snow. It's so there is no misunderstanding. Asking people to learn 30 words for a single noun is challenging. Now add verbs, add tenses, add... well, all of it.

I'll go through the lessons and see what's happening. I'm interested but highly doubtful this will take any grip on the world. English is the business language. That's just where we are. I expect English in the next 100 years to take over Chinese and other highly-spoken languages because it is quickly becoming universal. Everyone will have their own English, like American English vs. King's English but it'll basically do the job of communicating.

How interesting...I wonder what the future has for this bizarre Frankenstein monster of language.

Ghostbear1111 : Those problems with Arabic that you have I can relate to, French is REALLY difficult because most words are only one to two very short syllables, many of which sound very similar, and if you aren't paying complete attention, you can miss a lot!

A user of this :   Probably not much. It's more of a hobby than anything
else and it's been around for decades, so if it hasn't found widespread
use by now, it probably won't.

Ghostbear1111 :   What I'm hoping is
that the thought experiment aspect of it will make it more of a gateway
language. If I can wrap my head around how the language is built, it
might help me learn other languages, both spoken and code because it's
almost built like a programming language, from what I understand. The
biggest problem about learning a language for me is that I don't know
how to think in anything but English and I'm hoping this will help me
break out of that. It would also be fairly useful if you find yourself
and someone else needing to be discrete about something.