Lojban may not be designed to be complicated, but it's designed to be complicated. By that I mean, while the goal might not be "make it complicated," the goals necessitate that it will in fact be complicated. There is no way to remove all ambiguity from language without making it exceedingly complicated.
This is a persistent, incorrect interpretation of what people mean when they say that lojban is intended to be unambiguous.
Parsing lojban is unambiguous. Interpreting lojban quite specifically is not unambiguous.
Given a grammatically correct construction there is a unique parse. That is what is meant by "unambiguous". There's no problems akin to "Machines need to wreck a nice beach."
There are manifold ambiguities, however, in the semantics. When one talks of "lo sutra tavla" there is no indication as to the sense in which the speaker is fast. Perhaps the speaker produces many words per minute, or perhaps the speaker runs past while talking. These ambiguities can be reduced by using more precise expressions. Metaphorical use is frowned upon, so what it does not mean is one who persuades in a fraudulent manner.
For example, we can say "lo gerku" which refers to a dog, or some dogs, but gives no idea of how many. We could say "re le ci gerku", which means "two of the three dogs." More precise.
I can say "mi tavla", which means "I speak" or "I will speak" or "I have spoken" and even leaves the audience, topic and language unspecified. I can say "mi ba tavla" or "mi pu tavla" which are future and past respectively. I can be even more precise if necessary or desirable.
... my understanding based solely on reading ABOUT
Lojban, I don't know a single Lojban word... aside
from Lojban
I think you have fallen into the trap of not reading enough, and mis-interpreting some of what you have read.
I'm not surprised, I think much of the early material written about lojban was written without regard for how it might be mis-interpreted. Politicians today generally say nothing, because everything they do say runs the risk of being taken other than intended. The early lojban writers (writing about lojban, not necessarily in lojban) needed "spin doctors" to ensure that what they said could not be mis-interpreted.
All that aside, lojban is intended to be an expressive language, suitable for communication. Therefore it will be complex, although the complexities are not necessarily those of natlangs. I suspect that we are not that far apart. We agree that:
- lojban is complex
- lojban is not currently suited for general use
- lojban is cool
I further believe that:
- learning lojban (at least beyond "mi tavla") is mind-expanding
- learning the structures of lojban teach more than just lojban, they teach about structure, syntax, and monolinguistic assumptions.
