Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[Karen Stein <CloversImp@AOL.COM>]

> > > After a bit of thought on the matter, George, I've decided that this
isn't
> > > really an appropriate analogy. The reason that Dvorak is easier to
learn
> > > after qwerty than qwerty is to learn after Dvorak is that Dvorak is
MORE
> > > INTUITIVE than qwerty, not necessarily more logical. The only way in
which
> >
> > I'm not sure I follow what you mean by `intuitive'; surely this concept
> > depends upon what has been learned before?

> That's exactly what I mean. Dvorak is based more on what you have already
> learned before; Lojban isn't.


HOLD IT...  Lojban _is_ based on what you already know -- the gismu were (for
almost all of them) designed to have sound similarities to similar concepts
in the most spoken languages.  Therefore the root vocabulary, at least,
should be "more intuitive" for the majority of the world's population than
even esperanto (which is based on european/romance languages).

<snip>

> > ... perhaps terminators aren't natural because
> > English doesn't use them, the formalised grammer and its roots aren't
> > natural because English shares neither the level of formality nor the
> > derivation?

> But other languages don't either. Lojban was deliberately designed to have
> a DIFFERENT structure from existing languages.

> > Presumably the grammer seemed natural to those who created it,
> > and to others familiar with predicate calculus (with which I am not
> > familiar).

> Well, I'm sure that the grammar might well have been the most natural
> possible derivation from predicate calculus, but that's something else
> entirely from whether it's natural to an average natural-language speaker
> (a member of the general public).

How did "intuitive" suddenly become "natural"?

What is natural (as used above to mean, as I understand it, expected or
normal) is rather different from what is intuitive (comprehended without
concious thought).  The grammar of lojban is not natural (ie. like natural
languages), but I find much of it intuitive.  The grammar of Spanish is not
the same in structure as that of English, but I also found much of it
intuitive when I started studying it.

<snip>
Compare, then, what I've said about basic vocabulary (gismu) and grammar
above with the following:

> > > If you were going to look for a keyboard that was the analagous
equivalent of
> > > Lojban, I would say that it would be a keyboard with all of the keys in
> > > alphabetical order - I understand the original typewriter keyboards
> > > actually used this layout. Whereas, if you were looking for a
linguistic
> > > analogue to a Dvorak keyboard, then probably something like Interlingua
> > > would be the go, which was designed so that all the most familiar words
> > > for a speaker of a European language were presented in Interlingua in
> > > their most universally recognisable forms.
> >
> > Meaning that Interlingua is intuitive to one who has previously learned
> > one or many European languages?
>
> Quite right; easy to pick up, just like Dvorak is for English-speakers.

Obviously I disagree with the keyboard analogy as stated here.

co'o. karis.