Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: learning lojban

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 16:06:55 -0400

At 10:29 AM 08/30/2000 +0000, Garrett Jones wrote:
>--- In [email-masked], "David Twery" <dbtwery@b...> wrote:
> > Since English is one of the languages used to make the gismu, most
>of the
> > gismu contain two or more letters from the English word.
> >
> > A lot of times, that final vowel will be somewhere in the English
>word.
> >
> > blanu -- blue
> >
> > xunre -- red
> >
> > zifre -- free
> >
> > logji -- logic
>
>More than half the time that's not true, though.

First of all, you will find that the Lojban community is very forgiving of 
people who make final vowel errors, so just start using the language, and 
the final vowel errors will disappear once you've written enough 
text. Since no two gismu differ only in the final vowel (except the 
"broda" variable series), the error does not matter much except in a noisy 
environment. When you make lujvo, the 4 letter rafsi form that is always 
usable to represent a gismu is the first 4 letters with the final letter 
deleted.

>Those are the cases i have trouble with.

I usually assumed a default "a" and looked for mnemonic solutions, such as:

> Some of the more memorable examples are vacri [air],

Has the letters of "air" in the word, which thereby requires the 'i'

>cidja [food],

You eat food using your "dja" (which also helps with the word for jaw)

>xrula [flower],

A hard word in general, but it gets covered by the default 'a' case.

>and xekri [black]

A "kri"py color.

>The consonants
>are always easier to remember than the vowels for some reason. Is that
>an affect of being a native speaker of english, where the consonant
>sounds outnumber the vowels?

I think that is true for most languages.

> > I'd also suggest that you not worry too much about the places. Once
>you
> > learn the keywords, simply using and reading Lojban will allow you
>to pick
> > that up a lot easier. This isn't to say that the place structures
>are not
> > important; it's just more important to get a "toehold" on that
>mountain of a
> > list.
>
>Yeah, i plan on learning the list before the details. However once i
>have the list down, i don't want to keep looking up words to find out
>what that one obscure place means...

You'll find that you look a place up 2 or 3 times and then seldom 
again. You can do it in advance by studying, or you can do it while you 
use the language. I've found it more effective (and much more fun) to 
learn the place structures by looking them up as I needed them in usage 
(and I don't know them all since not all are used regularly). Most of the 
time, when reading, context will make it clear what the place is, if you 
assume that the person you are reading made sure to WRITE correctly. Then 
try NOT to look up when reading, only when writing

> > Learning 360 words in less than a week is an impressive
>accomplishment. Even
> > if you cut back to 100 words per week, you should be doing well in
>Lojban
> > inside a couple months ... good luck!
>
>danke. If i keep up the pace i have now, i will learn all the gismu in
>a total of 20 days, in under three weeks... what's the fastest
>anyone's done before?

The fastest recorded with LogFlash that I know of was around 100 words a 
week, up to 97% accuracy. I went through 40 words a day, but I was only 
50-60% correct the first time through - after the third or 4th time through 
I knew them VERY well.

lojbab

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org