/jbo/ - Lojban

Using the principle that the best way to learn a language is to use it, it took me about a month over at #lojban@freenode.org to get a good grasp of the language.
Do note that by far most of the chat there is in English, which is why it takes slightly longer than it otherwise would. If you want pure Lojban chat, you want to visit #jbosnu@freenode.org every once in a while.

>>155
Some other loglangs I've read a bit about are Guaspi, Toaq Dzu, and (Institute) Loglan. Guaspi and Toaq are both much more succinct than Lojban/Loglan, but both of them have problems with phonology - Guaspi has overly permissive phonotactics, worse than Loglan even, while Toaq has nine, count them, nine phonemic tones.

Guaspi does some things regarding grammar better than Lojban. Noun and verb phrases have the same grammar, in Lojban terms a LE-SEI-NOI-NU merger, and every place of a verb is clearly defined as to which of these it accepts. Also all compound words have regular place structures, while in Lojban only a few series of them are regular, like -gau, -mau, -zu'e, etc.

Loglan is mostly just Lojban frozen in time, but one nice thing they did there since the split is change the morphology so it doesn't treat compounds specially when determining word boundaries (slinku'i test). This makes some words one syllable longer but removes some of the complexity when creating words without a parser at hand.

Many Lojban users do change the language as they see fit. The dialect spoken on IRC uses lots of innovations that won't parse with the official parser. The most popular way to change the language is simply creating a new function word - look at all these:
http://vlasisku.lojban.org/vlasisku/%22experimental%20cmavo%22
Some of the better-known changes:
- Connective reform. Noun phrases, verbs, relative clauses and sentences all use the same words for logical connectives (ja, je, ji, jo, ju). Old style stays grammatical.
- Verb-nameword merger. Words with "name word" shape, e.g. {lojban}, behave exactly like verbs instead of their original more limited grammar. This one is backwards incompatible.
- Swapping well-used two-syllable words with less used one-syllable ones. Obviously backwards incompatible.

>>197
si'au so'e jbopre zo'u so'e cipma'o cu jai se pante .i ki'u bo sa'u so'i du'e cipma'o su'e so'u mo'a roi se pilno .i ku'i pe'i kernelo fa lo so'o cipma'o poi jai jai ri'a mulno fai lo bangu vau noi ba'a ko'oi ba ca da co'a ca'irselzau .i ko troci .e'u lo ka va'o lo fadni nu casnu cu smusku lo smuni be lo me de'e moi co cmavo se cau su'o nu pilno le cmavo .i ba'a pe'i lo jai jalge selsku cu ga clamautce zo'e gi jai nadmau fai lo ka jimpe fi vo'a

I would say most people are opposed to most of the experimental cmavo, simply because there are so many of them that don't get any use. But I do think there is a core of experimental cmavo that fill important holes in the language and should some day become official. Try to express, in a normal conversation, what you would with these here cmavo, without actually using them - I expect the result to be much longer and/or harder to understand.

Error correction: lo'ai/sa'ai/le'ai
Nonce words, names, quoting: ze'ei, me'oi, zo'oi, ra'oi, la'au, li'ai, la'oi
Adverbs and indicators: xa'o, bi'ai, xo'o, si'au, ja'ai, ko'oi, da'oi, ki'ai/sa'ei, ba'ei/bi'a/za'ei/zi'a, toi'e/toi'o
Quantification: ro'oi, su'oi
Sentence structure: me'au, ce'ai, xoi/soi, poi'i aka voi, go'oi, ju'ei