this is fascinating if you like linguistics..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

Lojban is a syntactically unambiguous, predicate logic based constructed language

Lojban has three parts of speech: one (called brivla) for both common nouns and verbs, one (called cmene) for proper nouns, and another (called cmavo) for structural particles: articles, numerals, tense indicators and other such modifiers. The cmavo are further subdivided into selma'o, which are closer to the notion of parts of speech (e.g. UI includes interjections and discursives). There are no adjectives or adverbs in the sense that Indo-European languages have them. The articles inflect to indicate individual, mass, set, or typical element. Brivla do not inflect for tense, person, or number; tense is indicated by separate cmavo, but grammatical number is absent. All brivla, except for a handful of borrowings such as alga, have at least five letters.


The typology is Subject Verb Object, with Subject Object Verb also common. Word formation is synthetic; many basic five-letter brivla (called gismu) have one to three three-letter forms called rafsi which are used in making longer brivla called lujvo. For example, gasnu means "to make something happen"; its rafsi -gau regularly forms compounds meaning "to cause...x", in which the agent is in the subject place of the new predicate.


Something of the flavor of Lojban (and Loglan) can be imparted by this lightbulb joke:

Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light bulb?
A: Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light.

This joke makes use of two features of the language; first, the language attempts to eliminate polysemy.
Another feature of the language is that it has no grammatical ambiguities that appear in English phrases like "big dog house", which can mean either a big house for dogs or a house of big dogs. In Lojban, unless you clearly specify otherwise with cmavo, such modifiers always group left-to-right, so "big dog house" is a house of big dogs, and a "broken light bulb" is a bulb that emits broken light (you can achieve the desired meaning with the appropriate cmavo or by creating a new word, in effect saying "broken lightbulb").


I dunno. Seems like yet another attempt to create a new better language by combining features from various other languages. The use of 5 letter roots for nouns and verbs reminds me of strongly of Hebrew, the importance of word order and emphasis on suffixes and the like reminds me of some of the Polynesian dialects we covered as part of LING1500. And trying to eliminate polysemy completely just isn't cool; not only will it make it harder for people to learn the language (more rote learning required) but it completely eliminates the capacity for puns.

And let's not get into the fact that the only static language is a dead one; If enough people spoke Lojban (or even if a small group spoke it for long enough) their oh-so-carefully thought out structure would soon be manipulated for people's conversational needs. And then someone would come along and note that it was no longer unambiguous and feel the need to try to replace Lojban with yet another constructed language to fill the niche Lojban once filled. Wash, rinse, repeat. Ad nauseum if necessary.

Having said that though it's still fascinating in its own way. Perhaps because I see it as ultimately futile but a great effort nonetheless? Who knows..