[eemax]

Learning a conlang seems like fun. But should I start with Lojban or Esperanto?

My impression is that Lojban is meant to be as logically unambiguous (in terms of grammar) as possible, while Esperanto seeks to be more of an international/universal language. I think Esperanto is more widely spoken?

Both are apparently somewhat easier to learn than other languages.

So which one?

[rayalez]

Probably depends on your goals. Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish.

To me the appeal of Lojban is in "expanding your mind" and using different tools for thinking.

Also, I've recently read somewhere people recommending to learn a sign language, so that is a thing you might want to consider. They say that it is easy to learn and is very different from English(hence - interesting).

[barry-cotter]

>Since you already know the most popular language in the world, it doesn't seem like there's much point in learning either of them just to extend the number of people you can communicate with. For that reason it would make sense to learn Chinese or Spanish.

Unless you find Chinese or Chinese culture really interesting or have a more mercenary reason to learn Chinese I'd recommend Spanish. I've lived in China for three years and have been learning Mandarin in a half assed fashion since I got here. It's just ludicrously hard. For the same number of hours of work I'd be ahead in Spanish at this stage, easily, and if I'd been living in a Hispanophone country the whole time I'd be able to read and understand at a high level, and probably speak and be understood well.

Why Chinese Is So Damned Hard http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t10216.htm

[iakdnf]

Learning Chinese will often take up all your free time if you want to do it right. You cant pick it up half assed like other languages. Ive been learning it pretty hard the last 7 months and am pretty conversational but still get lost in conversations often, but can always clarify meaning by asking various questions, so I have attained an awkard level of fluency.

I recommend only speaking Chinese and forgoing English at all times, unless youre talking to someone who cant speak Chinese.

My friend has much better listening comprehension skills and has been here about 18 months, and Im on track to be on his level soon. We actually try, though. To be honest, most people hardly try.

[Jack000]

I think it's probably easier to learn the phonetics of Chinese than reading/writing at first and bootstrap from there. Most of the written information in Latin languages are contained in the first and last characters of each word, while in Chinese it's in the outer edges of each character. The tones are a bit tough for non-native speakers, but they're very consistent so once you "get it" it becomes much easier.

Also you need to actually visit China to take advantage of the "extending the number of people you can communicate with" benefit.

[parallelist]

Yeah I agree with this. From a standpoint of access to the minds of more human beings you can’t justify Esperanto when there are things like Spanish and Mandarin you could learn.

Lojban is for thinking unambiguously and more logically. It's good for programmers but also exactly the kind of language that an artist or poet wouldn't want to learn.

[doublec]

Lojbanists have written poetry in lojban. Some writings on the matter:

http://arj.nvg.org/lojban/poetry.html http://mw.lojban.org/papri/lojban_literary_forms

[pbhjpbhj]

>exactly the kind of language that an artist or poet wouldn't want to learn //

Are you a poet?

I've dabbled in poetry - in part for many poets it's about exploring a language and pushing the confines of a languages ability to express something (eg the human condition).

Photorealism can be used in abstract art.

[eemax]

Are you able to think in lojban, then?

The idea behind lojban appeals to me, but (according the the times article currently on the front page of HN), there's an active community of Esperanto speakers in NYC.

I'm not really interested in extending the number of people I can communicate with, but if I learn a new language, I would like to be able to actually speak it out loud with other people.

[gleki]

Most vocal chats in Lojban happen through the internet.

[gandarojin]

Actually Mandarin is the most “popular” language in the world, not English.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...

[schwarze_pest]

Popular? --> Sort by L2 speakers.

[hnyc]

No, sort by total.

[qznc]

Not knowing either of them. However I find myself interest as well and read around a little. My conclusion:

Consider yourself a Java/C++/Javascript programmer. Now Lojban is like Haskell. Very different and it will probably expand your mind. Esperanto is like Ruby or Go. Not that different but a lot of fun.

[trenchant]

Lojban is logical but very difficult; it is so logical that the mental discipline required to use it correctly far exceeds that of natural languages. (Which may be an insight into why natural languages are not logical). Quoting Akira Okrent:

> To all the language curmudgeons out there who insist that people ought to speak more logically, I say, be careful what you wish for. You go on about the "logical" mismatch between "everyone" and "their" in perfectly normal sounding sentences like "Everyone clapped their hands." You argue that phrases like "very unique" and "sufficiently enough" don't make logical sense. You harp on "hopefully" and "literally" and "the reason is because," all the while calling logic to your side to defend your righteous anger. Before you judge me as some kind of "anything goes" language heathen, let me just say that I'm not against usage standards. I don't violate them when I want to sound like an educated person, for the same reason I don't wear a bikini to a funeral when I want to look like a respectful person. There are social conventions for the way we do lots of things, and it is to everyone's benefit to be familiar with them. But logic ain't got nothin' to do with it.

> And oh, how grateful I am. Do you know how good we have it, how much easier our speaking lives are made by the fact that language and logic part ways? Consider the word "and." Why, you barely have to know what you mean when you say it! When you say you “like ham and eggs” do you have to specify whether you like each of those things as evaluated on its own merits separately or whether you like them served together as an entrée? No. You just lazily throw out your "and" and let context do the rest of the work for you. When you say you “woke up and ate breakfast” do you mean that you woke up first and then ate breakfast? Or did you do the two things simultaneously? Or, maybe your breakfast was asleep, so you woke it up and then ate it. Pshaw, you say. You know what I mean. Perhaps I do, says the Lojbanist. Perhaps I don’t.

Taking on the project of learning a logical language like Lojban may not end in your being able to speak the language well, but who cares--you will learn a lot about linguistics and you will focus on potential ambiguity in how you use English or other languages.

By comparison, Esperanto's grammar is very easy--sixteen rules, easily learned by anyone familiar with a European language. It's wonderful to have a learning curve that is so short.

[pareidolia]

Please don't trivialise Esperanto by referring to the century-old "sixteen rules myth," this is harmful to people with a starting interest in the language.

The PMEG has many chapters: http://bertilow.com/pmeg/detala_enhavo.html

[erikb]

Just get started. It doesn't matter. Whichever will be more reasonable will be what you end up with. And if you spend energy learning 50% of the other one first, then it's not really a loss. Every little step you learn of a language also improves your global understanding and therefore wasn't wasted.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Every little step you learn of a language also improves your global understanding and therefore wasn't wasted. //

Global understanding of what?

Suppose the language isn't spoken/used by many people and has a different grammar to all other languages. You may never use the language and it's grammatical structure won't help you with any other language that you do use ... so then, what would be the advantage? Wouldn't learning a more widely spoken/used language be more advantageous [unless you've a specific goal like reading a text or speaking to an individual]?

[david-given]

Because language, to a large decree, determines your mode of thought. By learning a different language, you also learn how to think and reason differently. It doesn't matter whether you actually use it to talk to people or not.

For example: some African languages don't have temporal tenses --- they don't distinguish between past, present and future. Some Scandinavian languages don't have gender, anywhere. Some languages (though I've forgotten which) don't have possessive pronouns. All of these will expose you to new modes of thought.

It's precisely the same concept as learning as many programming languages as you can; learning Forth will make you write better C. Learning Lojban will make you speak better English.

[dalke]

Does that include Klingon and Elvish?

Less flippantly, I believe in 1980 it was for most people a better use of one's time to read "The Selfish Gene" and "Gödel, Escher, Bach" than to learn Linear B, in order to think and reason differently. (I specify a date since the main ideas described in those books now pervade culture, so they would have less of an impact now.)

Regarding Scandinavian languages and gender, "Norwegian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter—except the Bergen dialect, which has only two genders: common and neuter." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language). Danish and Swedish have two grammatical genders, common and neuter.

Traces of a masculine gender remain in Swedish when used to refer to a male. For example, "den rika" could mean "the rich", while "den rike" means "the rich man". However, it's perfectly fine to use "den rika" for the rich man.

All of the Scandinavian languages have more of a gender system than English does, so I think it's a bit odd to use that property as an example. Could you explain why learning (say) the Swedish gender system helps one think and reason differently in any useful form, other than the obvious one of being able to comprehend Swedish and related languages?

[erikb]

In English you have time. You say if something [happens] at some time, [is happening] now, has [happened] or [will happen]. In Chinese, for instance, you don't have grammar for that (=no tense). But you have grammar to determine if that what's happening has started to happen, is in the middle of happening (not sure how to express that in English), is finished and in many regards even what result was achieved (=aspect). You can't say "it happened" but you can say "happen-stateChanged". You also can't say "I found" but you can say "I search-done".

Now even if you try to communicate in a language with tense but without aspect you are able to communicate better because you know there are two things to think about, when something happened related to you (tense) and how that activity is related to the flow of time (aspect). You will find that even languages without one kind of grammar will have a way to express something similar (e.g. in English perfect/imperfect is expressed with tense). You might even be able to do something an untrained native of your target language might not be able to do: When there are different nearly similar ways to say something you might be able to choose the better alternative and distinguish between both of them because of your deeper understanding of grammar.

[dalke]

I believe my response wasn't clear enough. I don't believe that the statement "By learning a different language, you also learn how to think and reason differently." is useful.

I do not think it's useful for most people to learn Linear B. Instead, I think there are more effective ways to 'learn how to think and reason differently' in the same amount of time, if that's one's goal.

In addition, the comment about genderless Scandinavian languages is incorrect. There are at least two genders (in the grammar sense), and those languages have more of a gender influence than English does. One shouldn't learn Swedish to understand how a genderless language works.

That isn't to say that learning a language is pointless or that it can't lead to a different view on how to think. Rather, that the blanket statement doesn't contain useful advice, and one of the specific examples appears to be incorrect.

Regarding tenses, qué será, será. :)

[kazagistar]

I certainly don't think in language. Easy evidence: I know the idea of what I want to say, but I totally forget the word. Language is just something I have to compile to once the idea is fully formed.

I understand that lots of people actually do think in language, but you shouldn't assume that everyone follows the same mental process.

[ColinWright]

Just because you can't think of a particular word at a given moment, do not assume that you are thereby not thinking in the language. Experiments show that it is far, far more subtle than you might imagine, and that your language affects how you think in ways you might not expect.

I've participated in experiments[0] that clearly showed that my perceptions of what was happening in my head with regards language were simply not true. Introspection is extremely subjective, and very poor at getting at reality.

[0] Participation required an NDA, so I can't tell you more.

[erikb]

> Global understanding of what?

Language learning

> it's grammatical structure won't help you with any other language that you do use

Actually it will teach you something real. It may be artificial but it possesses the ability to get an idea that's in your head into the head of another person. Therefore it's real. Also artificial languages don't come from nothing. They are based on what its author knew about languages.

> Wouldn't learning a more widely spoken/used language be more advantageous[...]?

Depends. If it's related to a language you want to use, then yes. But a real language also has disadvantages like exceptions to the grammar rules, illogical rules (Do you know that chair is male in German?), and a dominant group of people who pushes that language forward without considering your situation (natives are kind of arrogant in that way).

I learn Chinese for over 5 years and am not fluent. I also know a lot of Chinese who have spent considerable amounts of their lives (some up to 20 years) and are still easily distinguished as foreigners when speaking German. If your native language belongs to one of the bigger European families then it might only take 6 weeks to get your Esperanto to fluency! So if you have never acquired a second or third languae by yourself then learning one of these two might help you learn to learn languages (I can tell you from experience that it's something you really need to learn if you want to get to any reasonable level in another language).

Last but not least the question in the previous comment wasn't "What's the most valuable thing to do right now?" but the question was to choose either language A or B.

[leke]

I recommend both, but not at the same time of course. I would like to throw in another language too. It's called angos and I'm really enjoying it.

Site: http://angoslanguage.wikispaces.com/

Book: http://angoslanguage.wikispaces.com/Angos+Grammar

[falcolas]

One more thing to consider: given its logically unambiguous nature, Lojban would make a great language for communicating with a computer...

[rpglover64]

This comes up often, but it turns out to be pretty crappy, in practice, for a few reasons.

First, although it's not ambiguous, it's vague. It's considered good practice to leave empty places that are not immediately relevant to the conversation. The way this works is kinda like if every every sentence is a function call with arguments, and every argument has a default value; according to the language spec, though, the default value for each argument is to be inferred from context.

Second, it's often referentially ambiguous (e.g. "the bear" doesn't necessarily uniquely identify an entity), and its system of anaphora (think pronouns), although different than English's is insufficiently precise for computer communication.

Third, there are other languages which are designed with that goal in mind, and which are more natural. I'm thinking specifically of Attempto Controlled English.

[alxndr]

I agree, and wonder about what kinds of communication it would facilitate. Writing computer programs in Lojban?

[baisong]

Start with Toki Pona: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_pona

[david-given]

My impression is that Lojban is more of a research language than something people actually speak, but I'd be delighted to be wrong. It's beautifully elegant.

Did You Know... Lojban's regular enough that there's a yacc grammar for it? http://www.lojban.org/publications/formal-grammars/grammar.3...

[gerold]

I agree that Lojban is a "research language", but that is certainly a good thing! Seen in relation to its size/popularity, quite a large amount of research in linguistics and computer science sprouted from it. I myself have comitted a master's thesis to the language [1] (on p. 29 I attempt to summarize where it was picked up in academia)

[1] https://goo.gl/hkr38R

[gleki]

And PEG too https://github.com/Ilmen-vodhr/ilmentufa/

[qznc]

So what is the actual class of the language? YACC means LALR(1) and PEG means LL(*), afaik. Can you write a LL(k) or even SLL(k) grammar?

[gleki]

If you mean particular values of k then modern Lojban isn't compatible with non-infinite lookahead although pragmatically a high value of k may do the trick on real texts. As for SLL I'm no expert, sorry.

[erikb]

One more point that wasn't mentioned before. While both conlangs might be interesting, some people might argue that Esperanto is more valuable because there actual native speakers. It's true that one guy created that language just by himself, but nowadays there are people who learn and speak that language when they grow up.

That doesn't change my opinion though, that it doesn't matter much with which you start.