WikiDiscuss

Posted by pycyn on Sat 16 of Apr, 2005 18:57 GMT posts: 2388

This page (indeed this topic) reminds us of how
little redundancy there is in Lojban (the cmavo
region is meven worse, of course — everything
differs from others by just one letter). So the
basic Lojban rules is "Don't make typos, don't
talk in a noisy environment." With over 110,000
unused gismu forms, it would seem we could have
done better for the gismus (and, for cmavo) we
could have tried at least to reduce confusions in
the same environment — rather than actively
promoting it as we did: setting series of words
like {da, de, di} which have the same function
and are a muddle in a noisy room — not to
mention on a typewriter). The excuse is, of
course, that that is what the data from the basic
languages gave us but, aside the question of
whether the word construction procedure actually
gives words easier to learn than random forms,
the choice of which words to take from the
various languages for concepts in a given area
could have been controlled with an eye to
eventual differentiation. Still, there is nothing
to be done about this at this point, but it is a
flaw and one to keep in mind for LoCCan III.