| Lojban | English | Mandarin incl. Modern Standard |
Hindi-Urdu | Spanish all variants |
Arabic incl. dialects |
French | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammar | |||||||
| Overall grammar complexity ⓘ (Number of rules, exceptions...) |
Low ⓘ | High | High | Very high | |||
| Conjugation complexity (rules, time concordance, irregular verbs...) |
None | High | None | Very high | Very high | ||
| Risk of syntactically ambiguous sentences | None ⓘ | High ⓘ | High ⓘ | High ⓘ | High ⓘ | ||
| Speaking and writing | |||||||
| Number of characters & symbols | 27 usually ⓘ 51 max |
> 87 ⓘ +many, least used |
> 6500 ⓘ +variants, historic, etc. |
> 49 / 57 ⓘ +compounds, diacritics, etc. |
> 101 ⓘ +many, least used |
> 38 / 110 ⓘ +ligatures, regional variations, etc. |
> 119 ⓘ +many, least used |
| Writes as it reads (graphemes ↔ phonemes bijection) |
✔ ⓘ Almost |
✘ A lot of spelling irregularities |
✘ | ||||
| Usage | |||||||
| Number of speakers (rough approximation in millions & world rank, native or second language) |
< ~0,001 Young language, very hard to evaluate |
>1100 1st |
>1100 2nd |
~700 3rd |
>500 4th |
>400 5th |
<300 6th |
| World repartition | N/A Too few speakers |
Worldwide | Mostly in China with worldwide limited spread |
Mostly in India & Pakistan | Mostly Europe & America | Mostly North Africa & Middle East | Worldwide with importance in Europe, Africa & Canada (~80%) |
| As an international language (rough approximation of second language speakers) |
100% No known native |
~66% | ~18% | ~54% | ~14% | ~31% | ~73% |
| Other | |||||||
| Has written representation for every spoken thing | ✔ | ✘ Typically rythmed (gives meta-information) |
✘ | ✘ Extensively uses meaningful tones |
|||
| Logical ⓘ | ✔ⓘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ |
| ✔ Lojban also has short words for attitudes, emotions, and meta-linguistics. Those are part of the grammar. | |||||||
| ✔ Lojban allows to find deficiencies in thinking, by providing ways to express more things, and more precisely. |