Conlang Critic Episode One: Lojban

this is a cool new series where I look at conlangs that I don't know much about, research them, and then talk about what I think about them.
/ toki-ito-li-pona
/ hbmmaster
/ discord

[@Potatoverse]

Welcome to the first episode of conlang critic, the only episode where jan Misali calls it "the conlang critic".

[@thewanderingmistnull2451]

I'm new here but the first video I saw was the Ithkuil one and couldn't help but wonder if Critic was misspelled on purpose.

[@elemenopi9239]

"Hello, I'm the conlang critic. I get it wrong so you don't have to!"

[@asailijhijr]

I love it when a planned format breaks down on the first episode.

[@edomeindertsma6669]

How so?

[@jaytch6639]

@@edomeindertsma6669 my guess is they mean that by choosing to score languages on a ranking system, the scoring segment of the first entry is basically pointless?

[@EDoyl]

Having a word for "THAT WAS A JOKE PLEASE LAUGH" is very ironic considering the only way to produce any humor from lojban is to tell someone a part of speech in your language is called cmevla.

[@atavoidturk9025]

or 42

[@InnoVintage]

The fuk is a cmevla?

[@nyarthecat8195]

Half-Baked Memes “name-word”

[@DrWhom]

Washing down there regularly prevents the build up of cmevla.

[@glowstonelovepad9294]

And cmavo

[@shybound7571]

"Nobody's brain works the way Lojban thinks brains work" several people are typing...

[@daniellewilson8527]

I didn't even know what sarcasm was until hish school, it would be great is someone would say "I'm beign sarcastic now" or "this is a joke" that's really helpful, with English you have to guess at it based on what the're syaying and tone and getting it wrong results in awkwardly explaining wh I shouldn't take things so literally or take a joke, that would be great, tell me when you're sarcastic or joking otherwise I'll assume you aren't, this was how it was until someone explained sarcasm to me during lunch, now I have to pa attention to tone more closely and either guess intent in text or look for /j or /s

[@zhaleyleitnib5150]

@@daniellewilson8527 Seems like you might have asperger's

[@MADMACHlNE]

"Nobody's brain works the way Lojban thinks brains work" That's part of the point. Part of the reason for designing Lojban was to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that to at least some degree, the language you speak dictates the way you think. Also, "thinking Lojbanically" is very much a skill that can be learned. Acquiring fluency in any language requires a bit of a shift in the way you think -- moving from a natural language to Lojban requires a bigger shift than most, but hey, that's part of the fun!

[@66LordLoss66]

NotTheEagles I know that I have started to realise every syntactic ambiguity, when speaking English. I'll also slowly start structuring my English speech to how Lojban structures it.

[@myotiswii]

I learned lojban to nearly fluent, and it changed the way I think totally!

[@hansisbrucker813]

@@myotiswii I wish I had the dedication to learn it fluently. I love the language and am even on the Discord, but time is an issue for me. uinaisai

[@myotiswii]

@@hansisbrucker813 It took quite a while, I stopped for nearly a year in between, but I somehow didn't forget anything. Which is odd, since I practiced Latin for 4 years in school, and only now those quotes like everyone else like VENI VIDI VICI...

[@the1exnay]

Myotis Welwitschii I'm rather curious, what did it change about the way you think?

[@cmyk8964]

The word for “name” is `cmene`, but it should have been `cneme`, because the `m`-`n` order was introduced by a typo. The Spanish word _nombre_ was fed to the program as _monbre,_ and no other word has `m` before `n`.

[@Sapien_6]

Woah, kinda like how grané became grané via a typo and then becamr gravy!

[@rileysmith9105]

What's so bad about vore?

[@Astronomy487]

lol I don't know, but fun fact: The actual word for 42 is li vore "li" indicates the number.

[@Ken19700]

It's short for vorarephilia, a fetish about being eaten alive.

[@StrategicGamesEtc]

That's what I thought, but it's a different language and one should not assume that similar sounding words have the same meaning. I don't see how it's particularly unfortunate. It would have worked as a joke, though. :D

[@et5896]

Sure, "vore" might mean "unbirth" in engilsh, but in lojban, "vore" means "42". Also, lojban is NOT an auxlang.

[@gayvideos3808]

Ken MacMillan I thought it was a pregnancy fetish?

[@devofficialchannel]

Tok Pisin has the word "pinis", which is derived from "finish". So Lojban having "vore" to mean 42 isn't weird.

[@POSSUM_chowg]

Don't translate "efforted" to Esperanto guys. Seriously don't.

[@jan_Eten]

fun fact, ðe toki pona word 'pini' is derived from 'pinis', and means ðe same þing similarly, 'toki' is derived from ðe tok pisin word 'tok', which is derived from 'talk'.

[@jan_Eten]

@@POSSUM_chowg its literally just 'penis'.

[@galvinn]

Time to listen to all of the episodes in order like a podcast

[@robingaming3391]

The meaning of life, the universe and everything is vore :v

[@seiban8455]

Well that beats my fanfiction.

[@66LordLoss66]

Perfect.

[@clover5479]

If you use ":v",probably you are spanish right xd

[@Afon705]

+Haoi Problably a 13-year-old who doesn't know about the death of "two-dots-v" nor Spanish orthography.

[@jeffreychandra912]

@Tetrahedrony ÙʍÚ

[@slamwall9057]

1:26 "y is the schwa phonemic?" was that deliberate?

[@zozzy4630]

is the schwa orthographic

[@CompactStar]

probably

[@Cloiss_]

so that's y

[@st1220]

69th like

[@BogusmanTheSwagman]

"Lojban has simple words for 'I AM BEING SARCASTIC' and 'I AM TRYING TO BE FUNNY'." So you're telling me they predicted Twitter?

[@mygills3050]

you should see the 2nd latest video

[@cannot-handle-handles]

@@mygills3050 I guess you mean "the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless"? kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZO8iaxnn7lmo5o I also had to think of tone indicators when re-watching this episode about Lojban. (Probably I had to think of Lojban and/or Láadan when I first heard about tone indicators.) 😀

[@IloveRumania]

@@cannot-handle-handles Yep!

[@eyemoisturizer]

tone indicators - boring - ambiguous - many people don’t know what they mean lojban’s words for I AM BEING SARCASTIC or I AM TRYING TO BE FUNNY - straight to the point - fun - anyone who knows lojban will understand immediately

[@xilefm-4517]

Did you know when you use auto-generated captions, the name "Lojban" is interpreted as a different set of words each and every time he says the name of the Language.

[@zozzy4630]

My favorite is "bluish pounds-force languages"

[@duane6386]

The first two times he says it are both Livan

[@themobiusfunction]

low Japan lowest man word Volusia backword life incompatible Louis Man louis Martin an online word

[@wilh3lmmusic]

One of them is JAPAN

[@-.firey.-]

"low spuntz" and "LaVon" gotta be my favorites

[@JontyLevine]

Misali: A computer can still deduce that you're beginning to speak due to the fact that you are beginning to speak. Every voice assistant since 2016: **only responds if you say the wake word first**

[@thesunwillneverset]

They can always hear and tell when you're speaking, the wake word just indicates that you're speaking to *them* so more like a name or pronoun than a speech marker.

[@BogusmanTheSwagman]

No, the wake word is to make people think they have privacy.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@thesunwillneverset That's cool!

[@skalty9868]

They’re always listening tho, it would just suck if it went off every single time

[@TheSast]

@@BogusmanTheSwagman That's cool! and sad

[@66LordLoss66]

Attitudinals, like zo'o (humorously), may be a good feature if someone has trouble expressing emotion or decoding emotions through tone of facial expression. Also, they can be used to convey little phrases, like *.ianai zo'o* {disbelief} {humorous} - No way! (It could be said after a friend has told a funny and unrealistic story, and you want to convey a humorous skepticism.

[@66LordLoss66]

Also, you can use *zo'onai* to convey seriousness. For example, *zo'onai ko sisti* {Seriously} You (imperative) cease Seriously, stop.

[@dejayrezme8617]

That's interesting. Makes me wonder if the internet would have had an entirely different effect on the world if we were talking a language like lojban. Talking on the internet struggles from not being able to purvey attitudes or other things leading to misunderstandings.

[@thatb1h855]

@@dejayrezme8617 there's already things that people use. they're called tonal indicators. like '/j' for joking and '/s' for serious. they're mostly used on twitter however

[@dejayrezme8617]

@@thatb1h855 Sure, I just wonder how that compares to Attitudinals in lojban. In fluid dynamics or other complex systems even small changes can make large differences in outcomes.

[@cmyk8964]

They’re basically “/s” and “/j”, tumblrites like jan Misali should love those

[@gwho]

4:25 sounds like an amazing feature, which you consider a bad thing without even explaining why you think that way.

[@danielcowan87]

Because art is subjective...

[@nokaton]

Well, it turns out that the grammar of Lojban is much more similar to that of my own native language, which is a pure analytic language. Many features of Lojban might look completely alien to Europeans but are very common among many (analytic) Asian languages. So, Lojban itself as a language doesn't look that strange at all for me. My own native language itself is even weirder that Lojban at some point. But I do agree that people who invent Lojban are too overthinking about the phonology. It's really complex and not-easy-at-all to pronounce.

[@waggythegeek2030]

What's your native?

[@the_hhhh]

@@waggythegeek2030 i think Chinese

[@mishkamcivor409]

In Lojban vore is the meaning of life and that is just great

[@jan_Eten]

no it is not

[@campbellstarky2144]

أم is pronounced with an “oo “ like in “book”, but assuming an “a” is a remarkably good instinctive choice if you don’t actually know. The short vowel in Arabic is a diacritic which is usually omitted (and the thing that looks like a diacritic here is actually a glottal stop, sitting on a silent long “a”, because reasons)

[@prezentoappr1171]

Mang conclang critic forgor to check ummi in Wiktionary smh

[@verylostdoommarauder]

Oh, this is the origin of ‘the show that gets facts wrong about your favorite conlangs’. To be fair, this was the first episode.

[@gwho]

42 = vore is a silly objection. tons of words in languages mean dirty things in tons of other languages. homophone collision across language shouldn't be a legitimate objection at all.

[@OrangeDied]

yeah BUT in natural languages its accidental; in a conlang, anything of the sort is a conscious decision.

[@prezentoappr1171]

@@OrangeDied well its vour in english, lojban 42 is /vore/. congrats homograph, anyway i cant find the lojban word in wiktionary

[@KurosakiYukigo]

While I admire the effort that went into this video and I'm a firm believer that all publicity is good publicity I do have to respectfully disagree on a few points, or at least, add some clarification. 1) Lojban is only designed to be syntactically unambiguious, not semantically so, since the latter is impossible. 2) While it is difficult to think in predicate logic it isn't impossible, and with enough practice you can say some simple things without having to wreck your brain. Lojban shines when written however, when you have more time to think, making it a great language for prose, poetry and legalese, if not so much for verbal dialogue. However I think a barrier to that last point is the communities size, where its small nature makes face to face conversation very rare. With more practice I think even that may be possible. 3) You didn't mention lujvo, or compound words, which don't follow the CVCCV or CCVCV pattern explicitly, and are designed to increase the flexibility of the base grammar. Obviously you are entitled to your own opinion and I laud you on at least making some honest attempt at research, but I feel you didn't get the whole story. Don't get me wrong, there are problems with lojban but I don't think these are among them. ~la blalo'u

[@ldlework]

"While it is difficult to think in predicate logic it isn't impossible" Most natural languages are based on predicate logic. Event the one you used to express your lovely thoughts above! That said, I otherwise fully agree with your reply here.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Besides gismu and lujvo, there are also fu'ivla, such as "xanguke", "mraigo", "bre'one", "katlana", "skimale", and "pintupi". All of these are words for languages or peoples, but there are plenty of fu'ivla that are words for plants, animals, or other things.

[@hashimbokhamseen7877]

this doesn't sound like disagreement on some small points lol. still it's your opinion and it's respected.

[@keldwikchaldain9545]

coi la blalo'u .i mi na tugni do lodu'u xukau la lojban cu xamgu fi tu'a lo nu voksnu .i mi so'iroi jai voksnu fai loi drata ce mi .ije mi'a cu ka'e sutra tavla je spuda .i lonu pensi bau lo jbobau cu na nandu va'oda'i lonu do so'iroi troci

[@devonoknabo2582]

Wouldn't la blalo'u be la .blalo'u.

[@curtiswfranks]

".i" is a bridi connector. It does not mean "I am going to speak now". It is a way by which to separate, basically, sentences. It is like speaking the period at the end of a sentence. It is not needed before the first bridi nor at the end of the last bridi because it is a /connector/.

[@66LordLoss66]

Curtis Franks I know, right. He also can't even be bothered to find real translations; in his Loglan episode, he complained that the Lojban word for father was the same as Loglan's “farfu,” despite the fact that the Lojban word for father is *patfu* and, if he had looked up English-Lojban translators and typed in ‘father’, he should have known that. What makes it worse is that he uses the argument that farfu is not like papa or padre etc. so his argument is moot. I haven't seen him own up and correct himself, either. He should: he got facts wrong; it's not right to let that be.

[@curtiswfranks]

66LordLoss66 I could not agree more.

[@66LordLoss66]

I'm glad you agree. I thought I'd be the only person who cares enough about this subject. It's a shame he is probably the only KZbinr that critics conlangs: his audience are bound to take what he says seriously and not look at what could be great languages. Despite whether he wants that or not, I'm almost certain. I'd be half-eager to try myself, if I had a good microphone and any time. If I remember correctly, he commented that he only “researched” basic information on Lojban before making the video. If so, it really shows. To me, it's like a restaurant critic going to a restaurant, not even trying the food, but just takes one step into the building and glances around before saying, “Eh: looks shit,” then immediately giving it a bad score. Notice how he only said Lojban used “predicate logic,” but he never explained what that meant nor gave any examples.

[@curtiswfranks]

It is really poor publicity. Conlangs are almost never especially popular. Any slight amount of bad press that they receive can really harm their convert intake. And, in this case, it is not even fair. Whether he realizes it or not, and regardless of his desires, he is wielding a lot of power relative to that which any of these conlangs have. ___ I just wish that he would have put more work into it. Especially as it is his first episode. It is a bad look for his channel.

[@66LordLoss66]

I thought that he'd have learnt his lesson and actually do research by episode *19: Loglan,* but he still got almost all his facts wrong and didn't go into any detail. No wonder he doesn't like them. The only episode that I can trust him to present honestly is Toki Pona: a language that he has learnt and has been using for five years.

[@fresh9530]

I found this channel randomly and you make some really well made content, keep it up!

[@66LordLoss66]

Additionally, I don't know where you got the idea that *.i* means "I'm about to start speaking now." You clearly did the most minimal amount of research. *.i* is the word for a fullstop/period: *.* and is a sentence separator. Lojban has words for punctuation marks, because A: it saves learning a series of punctuation marks and further limits the orthography/calligraphy; B: it means that written communication doesn't have any advantage over verbal communication.

[@yevgeniygorbachev5152]

4:45 by that logic, TCP packets wouldn't have headers. Having a header sound is nice for knowing that you didn't tune in late and miss something.

[@johnhooyer3101]

There is truly nothing weird about their predicate logic. And I mean nothing. I've read the big red book.

[@boomertiro1422]

The purpose of life, the universe, and everything, is to eat.

[@Christian-se5si]

There is no purpose Bc saying there is Implies the existence of a god or higher power

[@boomertiro1422]

@@Christian-se5si No it doesn't.

[@shans2408]

.i indicates that you are starting a new sentence. This is helpful because of the way sentences are in Lojban. If a person is speaking and another interrupts her, there are two possibilities. 1. He wants to complete her sentence, 2. He wants to start a new sentence. If he starts with .i it means he has started a new sentence, otherwise the he is trying to complete the previous sentence. May be research a little more before "criticising". :/

[@66LordLoss66]

Shah Hassan Tell me about it.

[@legoshaakti]

Yoooooo that makes perfect sense

[@the1exnay]

Wait, what? Interrupting people is part of the grammar?

[@shans2408]

@@the1exnay yup.. because like it or not, many times we interrupt people, either to say something contrasting or supplementary. For example: Scenario 1: My friend, here, has been to America... "Germany. not America but Germany" (Here u are correcting the person) Scenario 2: My friend, here, has been to America. Australia and also Japan. (Here you are adding to the previous sentence)

[@franciscojcsa6127]

can't you just, tell that easily from context?

[@Mewkityy]

The discovering conlang critic as a bored teen to getting a degree in linguistics pipeline

[@arcticflower7223]

I knew "vore" was the prefix for eating but I made no immediate jump to vorephilia though I've seen specialized animations for it. I thought the joke was a Douglas Adams reference.

[@themobiusfunction]

I noticed that "Lojban" itself is marked as a non-Lojban word. Funny.

[@66LordLoss66]

"Lojban" is a lujvo (a compound word from two existing words). logji - essentially just "logical" and bangu - essentially "language" Be careful to take what Jan Misali says with a few grains of salt, because he did very little research for these videos and doesn't really know what he's talking about.

[@amberwingthefairycat]

If you want the Lojban word for Lojban, you can always try *jbobau.*

[@cloud__zero]

Watched Episode 3, gonna binge-watch the series and very likely subscribe -and then complain about the lack of content-

[@rzeka]

this is amazing. I'm gonna go watch all the other ones now

[@porky1118]

Maybe I should give lojban another try. I kind of like 42

[@maxi6457]

I love that number. I do indeed love vore.

[@Melecie]

i mean, 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything so naturally you like it

[@jewjitsu72]

I think you have some misguided criticisms in this video. For example, the glottal fricative in lojban is mainly used to separate vowels so they don't turn into diphthongs accidentally. Much like the glottal stop is used to separate some words and sentences, it makes sense their written representation would be paired together. The claim that lojban is an unambiguous language is almost correct, lojban allows for semantic ambiguity, that is people can be vague in the words they use, but the syntax, morphology and phonology is all unambiguous. You say "Predicate logic alone doesn't work as a grammar; nobody's brain works the way lojban thinks brains work." It seems you've missed the entire point of lojban; these logical conlangs were originally made in part to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that is: Is our way of thinking defined by our language, and if so how much? Lojban was basically made to test the limits of what a language can be, and if learning a language like this can change they way we see the world if at all. We'll probably never know for sure because there are very few fluent speakers and probably no native speakers at all, but to say the creators of lojban misunderstand psychology is a bit of an oversight on your part. Also, that joke about vore was in bad taste (no pun intended).

[@aaronspeedy7780]

I am going to raise my child in Lojban and English soon

[@jewjitsu72]

@@aaronspeedy7780 based

[@pacotaco1246]

​@@aaronspeedy7780any progress?

[@fikatrouvaille3670]

1:45 my new favorite sound is the way jan Misali says "eNgliSh"

[@WhizzKid2012]

eenglish

[@zozzy4630]

I think part of the reason for avoiding in the writing system is that, for example, most readers familiar with the Latin alphabet would read a word like not as /tas.ho/, but /ta.ʃo/. Even knowing the orthography is entirely phonetic and after having a fair bit of practice, mentally reading as a digraph for /ʃ/ might be hard to avoid, so already frequently represents the voiceless glottal stop, but the only other options to represent /h/ would be , , , or an inconvenient character outside the usual Latin alphabet.

[@Clostridiumbotulinum37]

the ' only ever comes between vowels. I below the reason for it being an ' instead of an h was that it isn't a full consonant, and is meant for seperating vowels, so a smaller symbol was better. I could be mistaken on this.

[@zozzy4630]

@@Clostridiumbotulinum37 Ah! Yeah, I'm not a lojbanist, and jan Misaly seemed to treat it like just another consonant (but tbf this was episode one and he's gotten better at this). If it's just to separate vowels, I wonder if somebody originally intended it to be a glottal stop anyhow but it was changed later on

[@maiku20]

Lojban was not merely based on Loglan. It was a straightforward grammar-preserving relex of Loglan motivated by legal challenges raised by the original creator. So basically, right off the bat, you called Lojban itself "notable for not being very good" when you said that about Loglan. Maybe you already knew that, though. Given a 5-1/2 minute review, you spend way too much time (2 minutes) on the phonology and orthography, yet you manage to neglect the real faults of Lojban's design: the poorly defined buffer vowel, the weird "pause" phoneme which is usually realized as a glottal stop but appears in all sorts of inopportune positions, other tricky phonotactics (did you not notice the non-homorganic nasals in coda *within* morphemes? did you not notice the syllabic consonants -- contrasted with schwa + same consonant -- used to mark borrowings?). Who cares about the schwa? It's perfectly functional, even if yes it is hard for people from some language backgrounds. Lojban's phonology wasn't designed to be maximally international, just workable. You're so focused on your own international-phonology ideals that you're missing some of the real practical problems. Other major areas you're missing is the striking baroque complexity of the morphology and the lack of lexicon and the difficulty of expanding lexicon due to morphology and the "logical culture" of Lojbanists which pooh-poohs non-literal compounds even though the overly baroque morphology was strangely designed to encourage them, resulting in a sort of situation where the community is always searching for a knife in a tray filled with spoons. I do like your sense of humor and some of your points. Consider this a friendly critique of your friendly critique, and keep up the good work. :)

[@entiretotal7207]

Great comment, Mike. Couldn't agree more on all points. Luckily, these videos have gotten better.

[@maiku20]

@Mattias Burman whatever

[@algorev8679]

No. The reason for which you need .i at the beginning of every sentence is because lojban is spoken exactly as it is written, and that's why you couldn't have a period at the end of phrases. Thus, .i acts as a spoken period. Furthermore, the dot already represents the glottal stop. Also, lojban is NOT supposed to mimic the way the brain of people work, but slightly change how they think, in order to make people more logical. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, you know? They talk about it in about every source about the language i know. Sorry, but i think you completely misunderstood the goals of the language, in this case.

[@driveasandwich6734]

Can you tell more about how it 'changes the way its speakers think'?

[@algorev8679]

@@driveasandwich6734 Every language is slightly different, and has (at least) slightly different ways from another given language of expressing a concept. For example: I don't know if you've ever studied french (or maybe it's even your native language, in which case: hello comrade), but it has that weird tense called 'imparfait', which is difficult to translate in english because it mixes many tenses and expressions: the past perfect, the past perfect continuous, 'used to', etc. This means that some concepts that would be easily expressed in french using the imparfait could be much more difficult to express in english, depending on the use case. From what I've seen, english students tend to have quite some trouble when learning how to properly use it. And that's because the french language has one subtlety: it thinks about time differently than the english language. I know that's a weird way to put it, so bear with me. In english, you have the present simple tense, which points at a moment in time. Then you have the present continuous, which describes a duration. Then the preterite, like the present simple, but you shift the point in the past. Same for the past perfect continuous, etc, etc. (And the present perfect fits somewhere in here, i swear) That's a rather neat structure. French has a completely different one. The present describes a moment in time. The imparfait describes a moment or a frozen point in the past. The passé simple an action. The plus-que-parfait an even remoter action. I swear the passé antérieur fits somewhere in here. Now imagine a line that represents time, with a little mark in the middle for the present moment. Now try to draw the area in time where each tense applies. For french and english, you're gonna have two completely different drawings. That was also my main difficukty in learning english: I had to learn how to think about time like an english speaker to speak correctly. Tense is one of the flashier examples, but every language has those small expressions, those small details you have to comply with if you want to speak correctly, and each one of those changes translates a slightly different way of looking at things. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that, simply put, if you learn a language, you'll learn how to think like other speakers of that language. That's a well-observed result, but we don't know yet if it occurs because you learn the language itself or more because you discover the culture of the people you speak with, in which case the hypothesis would be wrong. Lojban was built with the idea that, if this hypothesis is true, then you can build a logical language, with logical and well-defined structures, that would enable people to think more logically if they used it. Or, to put it another way, the language is built in sich a way that it should be very hard to build an illogical sentence, so if you want to speak at all, you have to speak logical sentences, and thus think logically. Whew, that was long haha. Sorry if i got a bit confused in the middle. If you've got any questions, don't hesitate!

[@driveasandwich6734]

@@algorev8679 I am brazilian, and we have basically the same tenses. Honestly, I don't even understand ours completely because of how variable it is. But thanks, dude. I think I can understand where Lojban is coming from much better now.

[@algorev8679]

@@driveasandwich6734 *cries in latin languages*

[@bohij3030]

@@algorev8679 yeah uh, the imperfect form of verbs isn't just a french thing, quite a few languages have it and as far as I know English is part of the exception

[@chesspiece4257]

:0 ooh it has tone indicators built in! That’s cool!

[@bananacat3109]

legendary start to a legendary series

[@Mr.KokoPudgeFudge]

1:47 um... people can pronounce z & j differently in hindustani. For example, we can pronounce words like 'zameen' (which means ground), we don't pronounce it as 'jameen'.

[@johannesh7610]

I've gotten far in the lojban for beginners course, so I speak it a bit. and "la" is the article for a name, not a non-lojban word, there are other ways to mark a word as either taken from another Language like " .gy. English .gy. " and lean words produced by an algorithm to make them hard to pronounce (easy to distinguish) "la cidjrcari" (the meal(r)Curry).

[@oyonggofomocci2078]

Ew, names have to end in a consonant? Mandarin speakers will have a very tough time with that; the only 3 sounds non-vowel sounds chinese words end in are n, ng, and r (beijing dialect mainly)

[@henrywong2725]

oyonggo fomocci *laughs in Cantonese

[@keldwikchaldain9545]

So as someone who has learned lojban, I think that you have several good points, but there are a couple of points which are more misunderstandings of the language rather than real problems. The first is the use of ' and . as letters rather than punctuation. I agree that if those were used as normal consonant sounds that it would be ridiculous to include them as they are rather than taking up the more normal h, and dotless question mark. However ' doesn't take on the role of a consonant in the morphology of lojban words, and is used only in borrowed and name words, or as a vowel separator in the particle words and affixes. The . character in lojban words also only appears to separate streams of words because lojban understands that in spoken language, words often run together, and so it is therefore used to set aside names, and to make a clean delineation for words that begin with vowels which would otherwise seem to be a part of the previous word, and it is not used as a normal character as your video seems to claim. Then once you begin speaking about the vocabulary, I actually agree that it's a problem that there are gismu which represent some cultures and languages, but not all. Thankfully the lojban community as a whole over the last several years has spotted this problem, and as a result there's been a significant move to stop using those and "demote" all of those concepts into borrowed words or name words. As for the grammar, I think other people have addressed this fairly well. For example .i being used as a sentence separator, basically saying "close all the prior clauses, and start a new sentence" which is a genuinely useful thing to have when you have complex, deeply nested structures. Even natural languages have ways of doing this, like english with periods, however it is a little more difficult to speak a period in english than it is to say .i in lojban. As for lojban being based on predicate logic, really the interesting thing here is that lojban is just stripping off a layer of abstraction many other languages put on top of predicate logic, since basically every phrase you can say in any language can be succinctly expressed as a predicate relationship.

[@johannesh7610]

Good comment.

[@radiowaves4010]

"simple word for 'i am trying to be funny'" english speaking teens online: "oh like /j?"

[@radiowaves4010]

also the /s

[@chill-ified2913]

Man I hate those

[@hiimemily]

Can't believe that lojban has a word for /s.

[@Moley1Moleo]

You mention that even for a computer, the "I'm beginning to speak" thing would be useless since the computer knows that on account of you already speaking. However, what if you (or a computer) starts listening/receiving the message partway through a sentence? If there is no "I'm beginning to speak" sound then you can deduce that you missed the beginning and hence lack context. That is likely still redundant most of the time, but it isn't literally 100% useless.

[@myotiswii]

This video actually made me learn lojban when I first saw it, and it transformed my thinking, I would sooo love for it to become a much used language. It might not be perfect for everyday use but it is so interesting.

[@psilynt1]

The biggest thing I learned with lojban is how verbs (or words being used as verbs) need parameters to make sense and different verbs have different requirements. It certainly shaped how I view morality in a significant way. While you can just say "x is good" in both english and lojban, it's painfully apparent that you're omitting the "good in what way or for what purpose?" in lojban.

[@comradestewart4218]

Would you do a video on "John Wilkins language" published in "An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language". it is a philosophical language a concept you have not talked about.

[@panteleimonnielsen225]

@1:41 These sounds occur in Urdu, a Hindustani language with wide exposure across India through movies, songs, and speakers. (Also, many people in India have studied English since colonial times.)

[@zozzy4630]

It occurs in Urdu, but not universally (at least according to Wikipedia which, let's be honest, was probably his source). Also, studying a second language doesn't always mean a person is able to pronounce all the sounds in it - I've studied a lot of German and I still have a really difficult time pronouncing ü and ö correctly, and someone else might still not be used to pronouncing ʒ after studying English if they don't use it in their native language.

[@taududeblobber221]

what about झ़?

[@soko7awen]

It's that time of the year again, conlang critic binge here we come. :p

[@jan_Eten]

mood

[@mishtletsatsomoka4944]

*" .i " is used to be clear where a sentence begins or where a sentence ends and another begins (in thr case that you're saying 2 different sentences on just after the other). It's very similar to Japanese ending particles, actually.*

[@AllisimaProductions]

@@jaxonmitchell1902 very common theme among conlang critic

[@66LordLoss66]

I can't believe I missed this the first few times, but *la* essentially means *something named* and works for names of people, days and places. *la sam* - Sam *la ctuca* - Teacher *la nu,iork* - New York *la nondei* - Sunday I have no idea where you got the idea that *la* meant *the next word is a non-Lojban word,* especially since you just mentioned *zoi* a moment after and failed to acknowledge *la'o.*

[@GuyApollo]

Oh my God he actually has the playlist ordered right.

[@HBMmaster]

I have no idea why anyone would ever sort a playlist any other way than chronologically and yet

[@NESRockman1987]

This is why people invented the internet. At least an interesting topic where we got arguments in both side against and for a conlang! Thank you for uploaded this series!

[@trigon7015]

And thus, a legend was created

[@DFX2KX]

You earned a Subcriber at 'I envy your innocence I had to pause the video to stop giggling.

[@abcjme]

Ha! Simultaneously excellent and humorous overview.

[@sam2026]

Saw your decimal video and now going to binge your channel

[@Nihil2407]

Wasn't the point of the video that it's seximal and exactly *not decimal*?

[@jbeltz5347]

Wait, what did you have that Chinese character at 2:26, and not 妈妈？ Like a normal person talking about mother cross linguistically?

[@nexusnova6852]

I literally know more about Lojban than you and I have only been studying it lightly for 5 days now.

[@HBMmaster]

joke's on you! I made this video after studying Lojban for one (1) day!!

[@nexusnova6852]

+HBMmaster That makes sense. Might be a bit more wise to actually get to know more about how a language works before critiquing it.

[@HBMmaster]

yup! I've been told that several times. I've also been given a whole lot of useful information about Lojban! none of it has changed my mind though. I still stand by like 75% of what I said here.

[@66LordLoss66]

@@HBMmaster Most of your complaints are with how the language is presented as logical and that you think that's pretentious. That's not a critique of the language. You barely talk about the language or how it works.

[@itzsleazy6903]

@@HBMmaster 25% is a non trivial amount especially for a small language(imo). I really hope you review and update the series. Almost all videos before the "Lingwa de Planeta" deserve a quick review. But Lojban deserves a new video. You did Lojban dirty within 30 seconds of the video with your tone of voice alone.

[@pentelegomenon1175]

I once did half-create a language without verbs, it had verb-like things but they were extremely few in number (single digits) and very dependent on the surrounding nouns for meaning.

[@hikari31415]

"Human brains don't work the way Lojban thinks brains work." Well actually, some do. I think this would be a great language for autistic people to use. I mean... autistic people have trouble with sarcasm, sometimes can't tell when someone is done speaking, and bilingual autistic people are the only people I know who do the "oh oops I suddenly started speaking the wrong language for this context" thing.

[@ThinkAboutVic]

I mean, Mitch himself is autistic so he could tell if it would be good for autistic people

[@66LordLoss66]

There may be some truth to that. I'm not sure. I know that I found Lojban easier to learn than other languages because, thanks to its design, it teaches you the linguistic mechanics instead of pumping a new phrase for me to memorise. Creating your own sentances, using your understanding of the grammar, was easier than giving existing phrases to learn, to me.

[@taududeblobber221]

@@66LordLoss66 if you are learning phrases one-by-one instead of learning words, you are doing something *very* wrong.

[@rhymeswithmoose228]

While this is a very interesting comment, it's bad and wrong because I and other non-autistic people I know do the speaking the wrong language thing a lot (Note for internet: Joking about it being bad and wrong, but the rest is true)

[@tompatterson1548]

zo'o sounds like it means "geddit?"

[@kargaroc386]

gotta love it when 90% of conlangs have a sound for /r/ that I physically cannot produce with my mouth.

[@nexusnova6852]

The reason why "i" is to be put in front of the sentence is to orally indicate where one sentence ends and another begins.

[@lrgogo1517]

The part about zoi. and .zoi cracked me up

[@hubertk7363]

So it started here...

[@tomisabighomosexual697]

I’m so confused but this is so... compelling

[@66LordLoss66]

Believe me, he's blatantly incorrect about most of this. Don't use this as a source of information.

[@tomisabighomosexual697]

Xasybe'an. I don’t even understand half of it just man speaks about word stuff and I’m intrigued

[@66LordLoss66]

@@tomisabighomosexual697 Fair's fair.

[@cockykhakis6265]

2:47 lads we found it! the meaning of life !

[@personaldisaster444]

I feel like, con languages such as Lojban, Esperanto, Toki Pona and so many others, should be using in movies where the civilization is also made up! It'd be cool to see these languages not dying, cause they're pretty interest tbh

[@trepenko]

im in love with your cmevluhhh❤❤❤

[@kaiserouo]

2:27 I would say "媽媽" instead of "母親"... like come on, "媽媽" is literally pronounced like "mama"

[@pixelpix1728]

Omg the portuguese subtitles actually written in toki pona hahahahaha :P

[@oyonggofomocci2078]

1:40 uhh, we in mandarin have both a zh and a z, have you listened to Chinese before?

[@66LordLoss66]

뛟䨻龘㠨滚ဪ BlackStoner Zein If I were you, I wouldn't expect him to really get any facts right. Granted, I'm not an expert on every language he's covered, but I do know Lojban: he got a multitude of things wrong or misinterpreted them to seem like flaws. For example, he said that *.i* meant ‘I am about to start speaking now.’ It doesn't: it's a sentence separator (a verbal *.* / fullstop / period). To be honest, the only language I can trust him to correctly present is Toki Pona; a language that he had been using for years.

[@thedenalski4038]

“Welcome to Conlang Critic, the show that gets facts wrong about YOUR favorite conlang!”

[@kiro9291]

@@pixiepandaplush which, ironically, proves Conlang Critic's point that oyonggo fomocci can't tell the difference

[@ab-cx9lo]

@@loxisito9533 Well, r might be considered a voiced fricative

[@devonoknabo2582]

@@thedenalski4038 exactly

[@user-kn8bu8ue6z]

His pronunciation of أم tho

[@d.lawrencemiller5755]

The "i am speaking now" indicator isn't that useful if you're communicating in person with a single individual in a quiet setting. But in other settings, it tells you whether or not you caught the beginning of the speech, which can be really useful. Natural languages do use similar devices. When you need to address a crowd of people, you don't just start speaking and immediately begin transmitting information. You clear your throat, make a hand sign, ring a bell, sound a horn, clap your hands, etc to call everyone to attention. I don't speak Lojban myself. Does anyone know: do they say the "I'm speaking" phrase at the beginning of every sentence, or just at the beginning of every uninterrupted utterance? Ie the difference between, "I'm speaking now. My name is Simon. I like to eat eggs. The weather is nice." and "I'm speaking now. My name is Simon. I'm speaking now. I like to eat eggs. I'm speaking now. The weather is nice." Do they have a word or phrase that means "I'm done speaking now?" In many natural languages, it's customary to issue a salutation before ending a phone call or radio transmission so the listener can tell the difference between you hanging up on purpose or being disconnected on accident. In the military, a commanding officer will issue a formal dismissal, usually just the word "dismissed" to indicate they are finished speaking and their subordinates should return to duty.

[@aaronspeedy7780]

".i" is a bridi connector, meaning it's like a spoken period. It's used to tell listener that the sentence is over and the next sentence is starting. It's often omitted before the first sentence It is needed so that the current sentence isn't confused to be part of the last sentence

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@aaronspeedy7780What about just pausing, like in natural languages?

[@aaronspeedy7780]

​@@Anonymous-df8it In Lojban sentences you have much more complex structure. Take the sentence, mi dunda .i dunda ti Without the .i, it could be interpreted as either I gave this generously, or I gave, this was given.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@aaronspeedy7780 Why doesn't a pause in speech achieve the same effect?

[@aaronspeedy7780]

@@Anonymous-df8it That could be easily misheard.

[@hashimbokhamseen7877]

mother in arabic is not am its um or أُم notice that there should be a small mark or accent on the a or أ that should look like the w letter or و which turns the a into u :)

[@zeytelaloi]

Chinese also uses 妈妈 "mama" for mother.

[@matj12]

In a logical language, I'd rather have an unnatural unambiguous grammar than a natural ambiguous grammar.

[@asuka813]

Would you review Solresol and/or Sarus?

[@HBMmaster]

just updated the Big List.

[@HoneydewBeach]

Lojban has Hawai'i levels of glottal stops

[@j0nni235]

The Arabic word for "Mother" is pronounced "oomm", not "am". "Am" is a way of saying "or" in fus7a Arabic, the other variant being "aw/أو". Arabic speakers correct me on any mistakes I may have made

[@user-vm9xz4kv9z]

It's pronounced 'um (') Glottal stop> (u)Close back rounded vowel > (m) bilabial nasal

[@shanoxilt]

Ah, so you're that shitposter on Tumblr. There are several errors in your video's description of Lojban. 1. Lojban only attempts to eliminate syntactic ambiguity because semantic unambiguity is impossible. Ithkuil is the closest you will ever get for that. 2. The grammar book explains why they chose the apostrophe to represent /h/ in Chapter 3 Section 3. 3. In reference to the cultural gismu (root words), there is a vocal segment of the community who oppose them. (I am among them.) The solution is either to use fu'ivla (loanwords) or cmene (names). 4. A gismu is NOT a verb. It is a predicate. So many amateur linguists and glossopoeists get this wrong.

[@HBMmaster]

haha yeah I only did like entry-level research for this video. I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm talking about. really glad my High Quality Langblr Jokes are being noticed though. in response to your points, 1. yeah, that was definitely an oversimplification on my part. side note: I probably will review Ithkul at some point as well. it does a whole lot of cool stuff without pretending to be international. 2. as part of my "research" I skimmed through the grammar book and I concluded that even though there is a reason for using an apostrophe for /h/, it's still kinda dumb imo 3. I found the thing regarding "cultural gismu" when I was googling about for unpopular aspects of Lojban. of course, it's just one version of a problem that practically every major conlang has. 4. like, I get that "predicate" is a more general term, and applies to pretty much everything in a clause that isn't the subject (in nominative-accusative languages), but when you're talking about individual words, is there really a difference? (that's not me saying "this entire subfield of linguistics is dumb". I actually don't know if there's a difference or not.)

[@shanoxilt]

>using an apostrophe for /h/, it's still kinda dumb imo Eh, it suits the rest of Lojban's orthographic aesthetic. Lojban with "h" just looks weird. >(that's not me saying "this entire subfield of linguistics is dumb". I actually don't know if there's a difference or not.) Keep in mind that Lojban is also based on predicate logic, so you'll have to delve into logic just as much as linguistics. As for the real problems of Lojban phonology, it has some odd consonant cluster and syllabic /r/. The most notorious example is "cirlrbri", meaning "brie cheese".

[@ldlework]

I absolutely agree with the sentiment that shanoxilt has over-stated the difference between verbs and predicates. Its like shouting about the difference between brivla and selbri. Sure there is a difference, but since its a non-lojbanist describing lojban ideas with english I think this is fine. "Verb" is literally how I start off breaking the ice with every new student so I would relax on the shouting people down about it.

[@66LordLoss66]

I think you're giving yourself too much credit saying you did *"entry-level" research.*

[@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb]

This reminds me of Fun With Flags but in a good way

[@icicleditor]

Please make a Mother 3 conlang so I can play it in the west.

[@lunar_proxy]

so basically this guy introduced tone indicators in the weirdest way possible, got it

[@princesschara]

i really fucking love this video

[@otesunki]

2:31 It's not "aam", it's "oom"

[@sophiegrey9576]

the meaning of carnivores and the answer to predators

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Loads of languages have Schwa

[@pia_mater]

Portuguese doesnt have a schwa and most portuguese speakers pronounce it like the "a" in "bar" or the "u" in "cut".

[@svenofthejungle]

Hindi/Urdu also has /ə/, as the phonetic realization of short ⟨a⟩. The long form, ⟨ā⟩, is pronounced /a:/ as expected. Oh, and many varieties of Arabic do have schwa; certainly, al-Fusħa doesn't, but a lot of North African varieties do, as the result of collapsing their unstressed non-word-final short vowels into one phoneme.

[@HoneydewBeach]

ă

[@MrLegendofLP]

Man you sound WAY different in this video than you do in later videos and I'm really not sure why.

[@notwithouttext]

1:33 uh that was /ə/, not turned v

[@madvulcan8964]

Conlang Critic I have an interesting idea for a video.Its not necessary a language but a review on the sounds consonants and vowels people around the world can say no problem, an if at all there's a grammatical structure that most languages follow. Then Lay down the bases for making an universal language to get others started with.

[@bellesaysmeow]

I, personally, believe Lojban is the superior language as it allows the statement "Vore is the meaning of life" to be true.

[@boxthememeguy]

I'm gonna learn lojban bc imo it seems p cool

[@66LordLoss66]

Believe me, it is. This guy got so many things wrong and gave an incredibly uncharitable critique. It may seem weird at first but, if you read through its reference grammar, you'll understand it pretty well, I think.

[@lucasemanuelgenova9179]

Why is the Portuguese subtitles in toki pona?

[@hecko-yes]

they're not even especially good subtitles imo, or well the translation is fine but the grammar is wack 0:36 uses `ni:` to start an unnecessary relative clause, which then contains a necessary relative clause that doesn't use `ni:` it uses `li` why -also since when does logic make anyone pilin pona-

[@CompactStar]

Because youtube doesn't support toki pona subtitles so he forced it in

[@quantum411]

​@@CompactStarFun fact, at the time of me writing this, they do. They didn't back when this video was released.