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Comment by wirrbel | Hacker News Reader

I think this should mention Lojban. The spin off with a larger community.

In my younger yearsi tried to learn some Lojban. But it was hard. The extreme regularity and brevity of the vocabulary made it difficult to remember words. Also the grammar has a lot of features, special particles allow for flipping word order. Such stuff is actually very confusing.

What i really liked about it is that it allows you to phrase things as precise or as vague as you intend.

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It's like the APL of constructed languages.

It's more like Prolog with a maximum arity of 5 and about a thousand particles with complicated effects. The reference text says with some pride that it is "as simple as C++."

That will be Ithkuil with its weird complex rules and alien writing system made from a vast character set.

APL has a very simple ruleset once you sit down and learn it. The character set is large, though (a positive in my opinion, but not for everyone).

Or perl.

  What i really liked about it is that it allows you to phrase things as precise or as vague as you intend.

Is it possible to get some examples of this?

The tense-space system is a good example. By default, a sentence like "mi tavla"/"I talk" doesn't convey any temporal information. But you could add a tense particle like "pu": "mi pu tavla"/"I [past] talked". But that doesn't really tell you how long ago it was, so maybe you want to add "zi" to indicate that it was recently that you spoke: "mi pu zi tavla"/"I [past] [recent] talked" which might be interpreted as "I was just talking". But where were you doing that? Perhaps you were just talking downstairs, so you'd add "ni'a" to indicate that it was below: "mi pu zi ni'a tavla"/"I [past] [recent] [down] talked" -> "I was just talking down there". But maybe you do this all the time? Let's add "ta'e" to indicate habitually. "mi pu zi ni'a ta'e tavla"/"I [past] [recent] [down] [habitually] talked" -> "I used to talk down there all the time". But maybe I want you to know it was kind of a problem or that I did it too much? In that case let's add "za'o" to indicate that the event went on too long: "mi pu zi ni'a ta'e za'o tavla" -> "I used to habitually talk down there too much."

I like this example because: 1) I've only used four or five of the 28 sections of Chapter 10: Imaginary Journeys, which concerns the tense system, 2) this is only the tense system, not any of the copious other systems Lojban has 3) this shows you the kind of particle-soup that I think Lojban can easily devolve into, and 4) eventually, a real Lojbanist will arrive and correct everything I said above, which is an important part of the real flavor of the language. Being less snarky, my suspicion is that there is a real art in choosing which information to add, since none of it is obligatory (unlike English), and it is quite possible to add information in Lojban which would require additional clauses in English, that makes it an interesting mental exercise to interpret.

When I say "I talk to you" in English it's non-optional to have a temporal tense (the above is in the present) but optional to have a spatial tense (you don't know where it is happening).

In lojban you can say "mi do tavla" (or "mi tavla do") and that doesn't specifically give the temporal or spatial tenses. But you can add both to any degree.

So "mi pu tavla do" means I spoke to you in the past, "mi puzu tavla" means it was a long way in the past, and so on.

More details: https://lojban.github.io/cll/10/1/

Actually, "I talk to you" is only habitual; it doesn't have a temporal deixis outside of the hypothetical (although there is a weird narrator's mode in which it could be a sort of present tense).

Would "Me talking to you" be an equivalent of "mi do tavla", without temporal tense? Or did I miss the point?

You missed the point, but it's a hard point.

Suppose I utter {mi do tavla .i ba go'i}. {ba go'i} means "the previous utterance, logically, but with a future tense". English has no satisfactory translation for this entire phrase; the closest we might come is, for example, "I'm talking with you. In the future."

yes, there are some things that you can convey more accurately or precisely in lojban but... i think this is a poor example. Also, I think you're forgetting that translation is about intent not literal word / phrase conversion. The intent of "i'm talking with you." followed by something that indicates that the prior sentence takes place in the future translates very clearly into "i will be talking with you in the future" You can get all picky about verb tenses and say "oh english doesn't have that tense" but a) it's not true ("I am talking with you in the future.") and b) it ignores the point of communication. To communicate concepts between entities. The concept as that in the future communication will happen between you and I. "In the future we are talking." or "We are talking in the future." "talking" isn't temporal it's active. It can be future "we will be talking" or past "we were talking" or present "we are talking".

I'm sure there are some things which can't be translated nearly as clearly into English, but i don't think this is one of those things.

{mlatu} "kitty!"

{oi mabla skami} "Ugh, fucking computers."

{po'o fi'ure lo ro pipno ku zasti} "Only half of all pianos exist."

{cicricfoi bartu} "It's a jungle out there."

{lo se tsarainaitrusi'o ku ta'e na'e pensi} "Fascists typically aren't thinking."

{za'a bridi} "I observe the nature of some logical relation, probably uttered or written somewhere."

I have always held a fondness for {.iu.uinai} ("I am unhappily in love") both for its expressiveness and for the nuance

> {oi mabla skami} "Ugh, fucking computers."

Now I want that on a t-shirt ...

> this should mention Lojban

It mentions it in the first paragraph's last sentence.

> Loglan is the first among, and the main inspiration for, the languages known as logical languages, which also includes Lojban.

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