Talk:Welcome!/en

Old stuff

Aaah, the updated page is much, much better. Not perfect, but better. So I am not going to replace it. Thanks for removing the worst blabla. I accept your reasoning for not using an exact description, gleki.

The term “facultative precision” sounds … ugh … complex to me. I have never heard of it. Is this term actually used in linguistics? Well, at least its described in the next sentence but I then the term could have been omitted in the first place. I assume that most Lojban newbies are not linguists. ;-)

Those two sentences are stupid:

“Lojban penetrates into the essence of phenomena like nothing else.”

“Lojban changes your mind while you are talking in it.”

I removed them. I already said why I dislike these sentences and won’t repeat it here. If you are going to re-add them, please give me a good explanation for this.

This sentence is a bold claim and I want further discussion: “Lojban is the best tool for implementing machine automatic translation.” While I think that Lojban is a very good candidate for automatic translation I don’t see why Lojban must be neccessarily the best “tool” for that. Please explain. I don’t even know if Lojban actually is a tool for auto-translation or if it’s all just theoretical. This begs the question: Is there any automatic translation program right now?

I replaced “The number of basic verbs is only 350.” with “the number of root words is only 1341.”. I guess the “350” was just a typo.

I don’t like how brivla are described as “verbs”. This is not quite correct and it is misleading; the reader may be misled to thinking that Lojban has a noun/verb/adjective/adverb system like many languages do which is not true. I think the correct English term for “brivla” would be “predicate”.

PS: Why did the old discussion go away to my page? Whoever did that, you are confusing me. :-( This is not a personal talk, but a talk about the page, and only the page.

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Wuzzy (talk)‎09:17, 9 December 2013

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Yes, it'd better remove "facultative precision" although you can google it.

As for brivla not being verbs. Well, of course you can say that although "predicate" can also confuse people. No one really knows what verb is. They differ in different languages. Something that is a verb in some language can be expressed as a noun in another language. I think it's better not to use "verb"/"predicate" at all.

We need newbies to use Lojban the sooner the better, not start from frightening terms like "predicate".

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Gleki (talk)‎09:39, 9 December 2013

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Sorry, im not an expert in LiquidThreads. You can copy old discussions back from http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=Talk:Welcome!_(bau_lo_glico)_(old_version)

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Gleki (talk)‎09:40, 9 December 2013

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I don’t like how brivla are described as “verbs”. This is not quite correct and it is misleading; the reader may be misled to thinking that Lojban has a noun/verb/adjective/adverb system like many languages do which is not true. I think the correct English term for “brivla” would be “predicate”.

I think that, in principle, verb is the appropriate term, but also that is relatively useless without a Lojban reference grammar using that kind of terminology. Which I believe could be written by somebody knowledgeable (which I am not).

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mu'o mi'e .iesk.‎16:55, 10 December 2013

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Can anyone see the word "verb" on this page now? Technically there is one: "For example, you don't have to always think of what tense (past, present or future) to use in a verb when it's already clear from context." But that's more about English.

Criticism

04:18 < cntrational> "Enter the Lojban website" would be far better
04:19 < cntrational> "It is a constructed language based on so called predicate logic which makes it kind of a bridge between different languages and cultures." -- so-called has a hyphen in it, and the second idea "it's a bridge" doesn't logically follow from "based on predicate logic"
04:20 < cntrational> "What is unique about this language? All natural grown languages have inner drawbacks like complications in grammar rules, biases and restrictions that discourage other ways of thinking." languages very very rarely discourage certain types of thinking
04:20 < cntrational> they're far more likely to *encourage* certain styles of thinking
04:21 < cntrational> like applying gender to genderless objects or encouraging absolute rather than egocentric directions
04:21 < cntrational> "Lojban is designed to free us from these restrictions and see the world brighter." "brighter" is really cheesy and subjective here
04:23 < cntrational> futhermore, the implication that having to make less distinctions will encourage certain types of thinking is factually wrong
04:23 < cntrational> languages make us think differently by *forcing* us to say things a certain way
04:23 < djunias> Perhaps "...see the world, and language itself, more clearly." would fit better.
04:24 < cntrational> like, again, those Australian languages which demand you to use absolute directions, they *force* you to use the language in that way and thus make your mind expand in that direction
04:25 < cntrational> Lojban does encourage certain types of thinking, but for the opposite reason as what you state here
04:25 < cntrational> lojban *forces* you to communicate in a certain way
04:26 < cntrational> for example, the "prohibition of metaphors" (really the abstracting away of metaphors to a hidden role, but that's a different issue) makes Lojbanists state things in a certain way
04:26 < cntrational> this is sometimes clearer and plainer
04:27 < cntrational> or the specificity of Lojban tanru modification order
04:27 < cntrational> the language forces you to use tanru in certain specific ways to make it clear what's modifying what
04:27 < cntrational> etc.
04:28 < cntrational> so i'd suggest you rethink your description of lojban
04:28 < cntrational> it's not interesting because of its freedom of expression
04:28 < cntrational> but because of its *restrictions* on expression that encourage logical expression
04:28 < gleki> everyone criticizes ...,no solutions, i see.. but thanks you at least for the critics
04:29 < cntrational> gleki: sorry, went into a criticism of lojban philosophy than the english
04:30 < cntrational> the rest of the website, imo, should explain what lojban is
04:30 < gleki> cntrational: i mean no one contributes. everyone sits in the channel and is not improving the wiki
04:30 < cntrational> there's no need to awkwardly cram that information into that box

Xorlo demoted to a "other possible variation"

Re: https://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=Welcome!/en&diff=123619&oldid=123208

Man, you really don't like xorlo, do you, Gleki? -Maik (talk) 21:48, 8 February 2020 (UTC)