Talk:Loglan

message: I just thought that I should note that, as someone who wasn't previously familiar with loglan, I found the arbitrary introduction of the completely undefined word "vedma" to be VERY confusing.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.110.133.93 (talk) 05:27, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  vedma 

message: This article is not very encyclopedic. It even contains a sentence with "you see", which is condescending as well. I can't fix up this since I have little familiarity with the topic, but statements about what is possible and not possible in loglan are patently ridiculous. You can make nonsensical statements in all languages - how is it different from Noam Chomsky's green colorless things? Also time travel tenses? Give me a break!
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lojbab (non-wiki user asked to comment on this page) opines:
As leader of the Lojban redesign, I think that the article is fairly good up to the "For example" sentence that mentions the 'time-travel' tenses (which I agree is not the sort of thing worth making especial note of).  The remainder of the article is, in my opinion, worded poorly and is sometimes inaccurate, in some cases seeming to be contentious.  I would simply drop it.  The only other feature of the language that it is important to mention, is that Loglan/Lojban has a wide range of words used for expressing emotions and attitudes about what one is saying, although unlike natural languages, these are kept clearly distinct from the actual statements being made.  This is important to mention because the initial impression people have about a language based on logic is that it would be computerlike, and devoid of human emotion.
While the generic Lojban website address is useful, the site is very large.  People looking for more specifics about the language and examples might be directed to
the published introductory book (available for free download at
http://www.lojban.org/publications/level0.html, so this is not really intended as an commercial advertisement) or
the beginners' lesson book (as yet unpublished) in HTML at
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/book1.html
If someone does want to mention more about the features of the language, material from the introductory book is suggested and is usable under Open Publication License.
The only other wording change I suggest is minor:
"although he released many papers about its design he never "released" it freely to the general public" is disputable based on the meaning of "released" and "freely".  I suggest the more straightforward:
"although he released many papers about its design, he continued to claim intellectual property restrictions on its use".
Something to be considered (I'm not sure whether this is priority for encyclopedias, but tends to be of interest to the audience that would seek information about Loglan) would be to mention that Loglan has seen mention in a couple of science fiction works, one being the well-known Robert Heinlein book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"; another is Robert Rimmer's utopian "Love Me Tomorrow".  Language inventor James Cooke Brown also wrote a utopian science fiction novel "The Troika Effect" that uses Loglan phrases but calls the language a different name.
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: Kedamono I wonder if it wouldn't be out of line to mention that Loglan is used as the official interspecies language in the roleplaying game, FTL:2448. Kedamono 07:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: General comments

message: Removed the following claims, which I believe to be unsubstantiated, from the article:
* that powerful expressibility for logic and calculation was a design goal for the language
* that including expressive features from natural languages was a design goal (indeed, I believe the original intent was to make it as constrained as possible)
* that Brown used "maximally stable phonemes". This seems to be a diachronic claim (that phonemes would not drift over time), and it is AFAIK not known by Brown or anyone else which phonemes this would be. I think this rather refers to the effort to reduce phonemic ambiguity (which may or may not have been successful)
* that "the formal grammar was disambiguated mechanically (at first)". Sentences in Loglan may have been disambiguated using a formal grammar, but this was only done many years later.
* that Loglan's lack of a verb/noun distinction is the oddest and most difficult thing for a speaker of Indo-European language
* that Loglan has no objects, direct objects, indirect objects, possessive forms, or tenses.
* that all arguments in Loglan are variables (it can have description NPs as well)
* "After long use, the world has a sort of timeless, objectless, actorless flavor.  Time words and location words fall away except when needed to make a point, usually with emotional emphasis.  It is rather easy to avoid blame for responsibilities in Loglan.  Scheduling is ambiguous because the tenses are optional."
* that one cannot mumble Loglan
* that relaxed pronunciation is virtually nonexistent
Other editors are of course welcome to reinsert those claims that they can verify.
Other edits:
* I have also removed some occurrences of "powerful", because I find it non-NPOV, and am not certain which NPOV term I could replace it with.
* "Every language feature has standard, regular forms for acting in compounds." This probably tries to explain affixes, which should perhaps be described, but as it stands, it's just confusing.
* Section on time-travel tenses in Loglan removed because I'm not sure if Loglan has ever had such tenses. Also, the example seems irrelevant.
* Removed "even when run together, the language is still parsable." -- applies to any language, hence irrelevant.  [Oh, yeah?  What about English "ice cream"/"I scream"? -- Jack Waugh 13:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: I have found that there is another programming language called Loglan - part of Paradigm Geophysical's Geolog software.
http://www.paradigmgeo.com/objects/pdf/geolog_xv.pdf
RobBrisbane 03:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loglan - Logging Language 

message: It would be very helpful to see some actual examples of Loglan sentences, with transliteration into English morphemes. -- Beland 16:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion request - examples 

message: The Grammar section says "In Loglan, it is ... possible to say that John, a person, is literally a short word."  So you can say that a particular person is a word.  Why is this significant?  You just said it in English, and I would guess that any natural language allows you to put together such a sentence, even though it is nonsensical. -Pgan002 03:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Person is a short word 

message: I'm finding this article very hard to get to grips with, and I don't think it's just my usual density! Above all, the article desperately needs some examples: just seeing a couple of sentences, with explanations as necessary, would make things much easier to follow.
On a more minor note, is it really necessary to capitalise "The" in phrases like "The Loglan Institute"? After all, I'd write "I read it in the Times today", not "I read it in The Times today". Loganberry (Talk) 00:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difficult to understand 

message: The article mentions Linnaean vocabulary and borrowed names. How are those included in the vocabulary while preserving the statement "patterns of phonemes always parse into words uniquely"? In other words, what does Loglan do if a word contains a sequence of phonemes that already parse to a certain meaning? — Sebastian 17:42, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: A name always ends with a consonant, whereas all native Loglan words end in a vowel. Also, when spoken in a sentence, a non-terminal name must be followed by a short pause to ensure that the name is not interpreted as the first part of a Loglan word.  CodeTalker (talk) 19:24, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linnaean vocabulary and borrowed names 

message: Contributors to this page may be interested in a proposal to create a new :Category:Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits, which would presumably include Loglan. Discussion is found at Talk:Psychology#Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits 

message: Under the Loglan alphabet table, the letter R is listed as being pronounced as a rolling /r/ while under the consonant table, it is the tapped /ɾ/. Anyone knows which one should be the correct one? I know nothing about Loglan, I only stumbled upon a mention of Loglan in a book for a school assignment.
:The Loglan dictionary (Loglan 4 & 5) describes the pronunciation of "r" as "as in 'rot' or as 'er' in 'father'". The latter is probably confusing for speakers of non-rhotic dialects, but it's clear the intended pronunciation is as the normal English "r" sound. So I've changed the article to make both instances be the alveolar approximant "ɹ". However it's worth noting that as a general principle Loglan is very forgiving of regional "accents", so pronouncing this as any type of "r" sound would be acceptable, as long as it can't be confused with another sound such as /d/. CodeTalker (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mismatch in IPA  

message: I do not think that any current participant in the activities of the Loglan Institute objects to referring to le sorme lengu (the sister language, Lojban) as Loglan.  We refer to our own language as Loglan, of course, but I call it "TLI Loglan" when necessary for disambiguation, and I am the "CEO" (not my choice of title!) of the Loglan Institute.  I believe and hope that ill will between the language communities is a thing of the past:  a large proportion of the small population of Loglanists are also Lojbanists. Randall Holmes (talk) 17:12, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The use of "Loglan"