Lojban is based on an earlier language called Loglan. Loglan was the first "logical language". It was created by a man named James Cooke Brown, who wanted to test a hypothesis called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that languages affect and limit how their speakers think.
As with Loglan, one of Lojban's goals is to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Lojban is meant to change how people think. This is because it is unlike any natural language, and because it forces its speakers to focus on the logic of what they say.
Another goal of Lojban is to be simple and easy to learn, so Lojban only has 1300 main words. Anyone can combine these "root words" to make more complex words.
If you speak Lojban correctly, it is unlikely for someone else to be confused by what you are saying. This is because one goal of Lojban was to eliminate syntactic ambiguity from language.
One of the problems with natural languages like English is that they have very much ambiguity. This means that not everything a person might say has one clear meaning in these languages.
Linguistic relationships are always very clear in Lojban, so such ambiguity cannot exist in the language.
Here are some examples of words and sentences in Lojban:
"mi'e" is used when you are telling somebody your name. There is no country where everyone speaks Lojban, so nobody is born with a name in Lojban. But, some Lojbanists make up lojban names for themselves that they use. Because they know most other people do not speak lojban, they usually keep their real name as well, and only use their lojban name when speaking to other lojbanists. If someone is telling you their real name, they usually say "mi'e la'oi" (sounds like "miheh lahoy") followed by the name.
"go'i" means "yes, I agree with you". Sometimes in English, the word 'yes' is used to mean other things. For example, you might say "Yes" (or "OK" or "uh-huh") to tell someone that you heard what they are saying. In Lojban you do not say "go'i" for this; instead you say "je'e" (sounds like "zhehheh"). This is part of the idea of lojban: to make words easier to understand by making sure that one word can only mean one thing.
Annulment
Annulment is a method in the Roman Catholic Church of undoing a marriage, similar to divorce. However, the difference is that an annulment says that the marriage never really happened.
Reasons include:
Osroene
Osroene (also spelled Osrohene, Osrhoene, from the Greek ; '), also known by the name of its capital city, Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa, Turkey), was a historic kingdom located on the present-day border of Syria and Turkey. The kingdom was Assyrian and enjoyed semi-autonomy to complete independence from the years of 132 BCE to 244 AD.
It was a Syriac speaking kingdom, and according to an ancient legend King Abgar V of Edessa was converted to Christianity by Thaddeus of Edessa, or Saint Addai, one of the Seventy-two Disciples. By 201 AD or earlier, under King Abgar the Great, Osroene became the first Christian state.
BRIT Awards
The BRIT Awards (often called just the Brits), are awards given yearly by the British Phonographic Industry (an association of British people who are professionally involved in the recorded music industry) for outstanding work in music.
There have been many musicians that have won more than one award. The table below shows those that have won more than four awards.
Sound of the Underground
Sound of the Underground was a 2003 album by Girls Aloud. It was their first album. It was released in May 2003.
The album was released again in December 2003. It had other songs too.
What Will the Neighbours Say?
What Will The Neighbours Say? was a 2004 album by Girls Aloud. It was their second album. Five singles were released from it. After the album was released Girls Aloud did their first tour, What Will the Neighbours Say? Live.
Chemistry (album)
Chemistry was a 2005 album by Girls Aloud. It was their third album.
The Sound of Girls Aloud
The Sound of Girls Aloud was a 2006 album by Girls Aloud that featured all of their most popular songs so far. It was their fourth album.
Tangled Up
Tangled Up was a 2007 album by Girls Aloud. It was their fifth album.
Oil paint
Oil paint is a traditional method used for artists' painting. In oil paint, "pigments" (colours) are held together by the medium of oil. The most usual type of oil that is used in paint is linseed oil.
A picture that is painted using oil paint is called an "oil painting". Oil paint takes a long time to dry. Artists find this useful because they can keep working on the painting for a long time. People say that Leonardo da Vinci worked on his painting of the Mona Lisa for four years, even though it is not a very large picture. Oils paints, and oil paintings are often just called "oils" for short. If someone talks about "painting in oils" they mean that the painting is done in oil paints.
No-one knows when oil paint was first used. Caves in Afghanistan are decorated with ancient paintings in paint mixed with oils.
It is believed that this type of paint was used in other countries of Asia as well.
It is believed that oil paint was used in Europe in the Middle Ages at first for decorating shields, because oil paint lasted better than the traditional paint of tempera when it was in the weather, or if it was roughly treated.
The Renaissance art historian, Giorgio Vasari, said that the art of oil painting came from northern Europe and the person who invented it was the famous Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. Artists from the areas of modern Belgium and the Netherlands were the first artists to make oil painting their usual method of painting. This trend spread to other parts of Northern Europe. A famous painting called the "Portinari Altarpiece" by Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence in the 1470s at a time when Leonardo da Vinci was young. Oil paintings at this date were usually done on wooden panels, in the way that tempera pictures were.
Another influence on oil painting in Italy was an artist from Sicily called Antonello da Messina, who had learnt to paint in oils. He travelled the length of Italy, from Sicily to Venice and did many small paintings including portraits and pictures of the Madonna and Child and Jesus. He influenced many artists, particularly in Venice. Giovanni Bellini, who was one of a family of well-known painters, was one of the first painters in Italy to paint very large pictures in oil paint. Artists from other parts of Italy visited Venice and soon the new method of painting spread.
By 1540, there were very few painters who still worked in tempera, the previous method for painting on panels. In Italy, many artists continued to decorate walls and ceiling with frescos. However, it was discovered that oil paint, unlike tempera was flexible (it could bend). This meant that it could be used on flexible surfaces like cloth without breaking away and falling off. Once painting on canvas (heavy linen cloth) became usual, artists were able to do enormous pictures. If the painting was too big to fit through a doorway, the artist could just roll it up.
Since the 1500s, oil painting has remained the favourite technique for artists who want to paint a picture that will last for a long time. The gallery below shows works by some of the most famous artists who have worked in oil paint. The famous artists of the 20th century are not shown here, because many of their works are copyright. Famous modernist artists who have painted in oils include Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich, Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, and Jackson Pollock.
Up to about 1960 oils and water paints were overwhelmingly the leading materials chosen by painters. In the years since then acrylic paints and water-mixable oil paints have been more and more used.