mark@utzoo.UUCP (mark bloore) (07/14/83)
the loglan language is not supposed to be biased toward any one natural
language family. the basic vocabulary is chosen so as to be recognizable
to as large a fraction of the world's population as possible. this is
done by making words at least partially similar to their translation in
the eight most widely-spoken languages. english and chinese are tied for
first place, so the vocabulary should be easily learned by speakers of these
languages. (this basic vocabulary comprises about 1000 "primitives", from
which "complex" words may be formed as needed).
the grammer has points of similarity with english and the romance languages,
and is basically tenseless (though you can add tense if you need it), which
i gather is the way of chinese.
many or most of the active loglanists are linguists, but so far as i know
most or all are native english speakers. i am not in a position to judge
how english-biased loglan really is, as i know little of languages other
than english, and nothing of chinese.
mARK bLOORE
univ of toronto
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!mark