From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Mar 01 10:37:39 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:37:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HMq9q-0004wz-HI for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:37:38 -0800 Received: from phma.optus.nu ([166.82.175.165] helo=ixazon.dynip.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HMq9h-0004wn-4A for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:37:38 -0800 Received: from chausie (unknown [192.168.7.4]) by ixazon.dynip.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62EF0CEB0C for ; Thu, 1 Mar 2007 13:37:10 -0500 (EST) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 13:27:58 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 References: <20070228053052.DB4437DAE@bender.tigertech.net> <2CB51B91-3400-420A-A0F7-C5458D2AC954@umich.edu> <23dc8c770703010837o631b9ccbj2c3c27facc5abe8e@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <23dc8c770703010837o631b9ccbj2c3c27facc5abe8e@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200703011327.59569.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: -2.3 X-Spam-Score-Int: -22 X-Spam-Bar: -- X-archive-position: 4069 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Thursday 01 March 2007 11:37, Karl Naylor wrote: > Intuitively, I would like to see this emphasised right at the > beginning of Lojban beginners' courses -- "don't try to look for nouns > and verbs in this language, nor for any other concepts from other > human languages you know. Looking for predicate calculus concepts is > probably OK". There are nouns and verbs in Lojban, and also conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. There are other parts of speech that don't exist in English, such as the predicate marker (which exists in Tok Pisin), terminators, and spoken quotation marks. There are no adjectives or adverbs in Lojban, and nouns and verbs are used very differently. German is too close to English (if you're learning German, already knowing English) to compare learning Lojban to a Pimsleur German tape. You might compare it to learning Turkish or Ojibwe. English is a nounish language, while Lojban is a verbish language. (I don't know the proper terms.) Consider "clock". If I use "clock" as a verb, it's not something a clock does; it's something done using a clock. But if I use {junla} as a verb, it is something a clock does: it ticks out time intervals with some precision, using some mechanism (or electronism). And if I use the Navajo word as a verb, it is something a clock does: it moves slowly in a circle. phma