Re: [stack] Lojban (was: cabbages and kings)

William Tanksley scripsit:

> A lot of work has been done with Esperanto and Ido (there are huge
> communities); on the other hand, "Basic English" is a commonly used
> standard subset of English that isn't as hard to learn (although it'll
> be deceptively hard for a native English speaker to write, since it's
> very much more restricted so that non-native speakers will have an
> easier time learning it).

If you mean Ogden's Basic English, it's hopeless as a subset language,
because its semantics is relentlessly non-compositional: to say "succeed"
you say "make good" or "do well", but the meanings of "make" and "good",
or of "do" and "well", have nothing to do with succeeding.

What's more, you cannot coin new words, so "The officer led his soldiers
against the enemy" turns into "The person in military authority was the
guide of his men in the army against the nation at war".

See
http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com/2005/06/why-basic-english-doesnt-work.html
for more details.

There are less drastically impaired simplified Englishes
out there, like the Voice of America's Special English: see
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/about_special_english.cfm .

-- 
If you understand,                      John Cowan
   things are just as they are;         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
if you do not understand,               [email protected]
   things are just as they are.