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Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by jmillikin on Saturday May 20, 2023 @02:18AM (#36009771)
The goal of Lojban is to eliminate syntactic/grammatical ambiguity:

  Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
In this example, "flies" could be either a noun or verb depending on context. That sort of construct isn't possible in Lojban.

Of course, it's still possible to use Lojban to express statements that have am ambiguous or unclear meaning.

Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by djtango on Saturday May 20, 2023 @02:30AM (#36009824)
Ah, classic HN Saturday morning - finding myself dreaming up Hungarian notation in English to disambiguate grammatical types

    nTime vFlies avLike an nArrow, nFruit vFlies avLike a nBanana

It's ugly but if we all adhere to this convention and haze our juniors, we'll eliminate most our problems
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by prerok on Saturday May 20, 2023 @02:49AM (#36009903)
avLike still has two different meanings ;)

Actually, I am not sure that having different meanings of the same word in different contexts is really the problematic part causing ambiguity in conversations.

For example, sarcasm is a much more difficult problem. The words are the same, the meaning of the sentences is the same but the author's intent, the meaning behind those sentences is opposite if they are being sarcastic or not.

Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by detrites on Saturday May 20, 2023 @03:00AM (#36009939)

  > nFruit nFlies vLike a nBanana
vFprTprpFprY.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by blauditore on Saturday May 20, 2023 @03:33AM (#36010081)
The latter part actually refers to fruit flies (insects), who like bananas. Also took me a while to figure out.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by djtango on Saturday May 20, 2023 @11:35AM (#36012779)
Ah - bugs will be bugs!
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by cjallen88 on Saturday May 20, 2023 @03:55AM (#36010157)
This is basically what Esperanto and Ido do, different word classes and in different letters.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by yosito on Saturday May 20, 2023 @07:20AM (#36010954)
As someone who speaks Hungarian, but never seen Hungarian notation outside the context of programming, I'm suddenly realizing that Hungarian notation is probably named after how the Hungarian language itself works.

Words in Hungarian have specific endings that change their "grammatical type" (I forget the grammatical term for that... part of speech?)

Some examples:

1. "-ás/-és": Transforms a verb into a noun that denotes an action or a profession. For example, the verb "tanul" (to study) becomes "tanulás" (study or studying).

2. "-ó/-ő": Converts a verb into a noun that refers to a person who does the action. For example, "tanít" (to teach) becomes "tanító" (teacher).

3. "-hat/-het": Added to a verb to form a new verb indicating possibility or permission. For example, "olvas" (reads) turns into "olvas-hat" (may/can read).

4. "-tlan/-tlen": When attached to a noun, it creates an adjective expressing the lack of something. For example, "szín" (color) becomes "színtelen" (colorless).

5. "-i": Added to a noun to create an adjective indicating origin or belonging. For example, "Amerika" (America) becomes "amerikai" (American).

6. "-ol": Attached to nouns to form verbs. This is often used with foreign words in Hungarian, like "ghosting-ol", "bullying-ol", "coworking-ol".

Additionally, in Hungarian these suffixes can be combined, so if you want to use the English noun "ghosting" as a noun in Hungarian, you still actually have to add the suffixes, so you would say "ghosting-ol-ás".

Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by shagie on Saturday May 20, 2023 @12:05PM (#36013059)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation

> The original Hungarian notation was invented by Charles Simonyi, a programmer who worked at Xerox PARC circa 1972–1981, and who later became Chief Architect at Microsoft. The name of the notation is a reference to Simonyi's nation of origin, and also, according to Andy Hertzfeld, because it made programs "look like they were written in some inscrutable foreign language". Hungarian people's names are "reversed" compared to most other European names; the family name precedes the given name. For example, the anglicized name "Charles Simonyi" in Hungarian was originally "Simonyi Károly". In the same way, the type name precedes the "given name" in Hungarian notation. The similar Smalltalk "type last" naming style (e.g. aPoint and lastPoint) was common at Xerox PARC during Simonyi's tenure there.

> Simonyi's paper on the notation referred to prefixes used to indicate the "type" of information being stored. His proposal was largely concerned with decorating identifier names based upon the semantic information of what they store (in other words, the variable's purpose). Simonyi's notation came to be called Apps Hungarian, since the convention was used in the applications division of Microsoft. Systems Hungarian developed later in the Microsoft Windows development team. Apps Hungarian is not entirely distinct from what became known as Systems Hungarian, as some of Simonyi's suggested prefixes contain little or no semantic information (see below for examples).

---

Simonyi's native language may have had some impact on how he wrote code, but it was not "human language -> write code like Hungarian -> Hungarian notation".

https://www.technologyreview.com/2007/01/01/227178/anything-...

> The resulting code was dense and hard to read. ­Simonyi’s system came to be known as Hungarian notation, both in homage to its creator’s birthplace and because it made programs “look like they were written in some inscrutable foreign language,” according to programming pioneer Andy Hertzfeld. Hungarian is widely cursed by its detractors. Canadian Java expert Roedy Green has jokingly called it “the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques.” Mozilla programmer Alec Flett wrote this parody:

    prepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian! qWhat’s artThe adjBig nProblem?
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by mike_hearn on Saturday May 20, 2023 @01:11PM (#36013669)
It's not. It's named that way because the guy at Microsoft who implemented it (Charles Simonyi) was Hungarian.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by yosito on Sunday May 21, 2023 @02:16AM (#36018464)
I'd be willing to bet that his native language played a role in how he thought about naming things.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by shagie on Saturday May 20, 2023 @10:47AM (#36012359)
On my yet to be assembled shelf of random things will be a bunch of books that intend to make one go o_O when they read titles in the background of video call.

One of the books is the language guide to Ithkuil ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil /// https://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Ithkuil-Language-John-Quijada... //// https://youtu.be/x_x_PQ85_0k )

This might fit some of your goals.

Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by emsign on Saturday May 20, 2023 @01:08PM (#36013637)
What problems? Why most? And why "our"? I find it silly to think that a more precise language is going to solve "most of our problems", it's a bold claim which I believe to be false. No, world problems do not vanish if we were just better at understanding each other, that's not how world problems arise.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by adastra22 on Saturday May 20, 2023 @02:32AM (#36009828)
Which is a bit ironic, because in the year 2023 it turns out that correctly parsing sentences is an easier problem to solve than extracting meaning from context, even when given a known correct parsing. Lojban optimized for the wrong goal.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by emsign on Saturday May 20, 2023 @01:09PM (#36013650)
Exactly. And being able to handle ambiguity as a human is one of our strong points. We must not cripple our mental capability to understand and use ambiguity in language, it would a loss.
Re:Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from ... by emsign on Saturday May 20, 2023 @01:03PM (#36013611)
Why would you want to use a language that eliminates this ambiguity other than in legal or academic contexts? I think sentences like "Fruit flies like a banana." must exist, they are useful in that they are stimulating the recipient's mind to question the senders intentions. It demands further inquiries and questions, which is I think a good thing. In some cases being vague and ambigious is the only way to ask further questions.