From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon May 28 12:36:10 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 28 May 2007 12:36:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsl0j-00057s-Jv for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 12:36:10 -0700 Received: from 25.mail-out.ovh.net ([213.186.37.103]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsl0b-00057V-Ej for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 12:36:09 -0700 Received: (qmail 8880 invoked by uid 503); 28 May 2007 19:33:20 -0000 Received: (QMFILT: 1.0); 28 May 2007 19:33:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail75.ha.ovh.net) (213.186.33.59) by 25.mail-out.ovh.net with SMTP; 28 May 2007 19:33:20 -0000 Received: from b0.ovh.net (HELO queue-out) (213.186.33.50) by b0.ovh.net with SMTP; 28 May 2007 19:35:55 -0000 Received: from 46.12-225-89.dsl.completel.net (46.12-225-89.dsl.completel.net [89.225.12.46]) by ssl0.ovh.net (IMP) with HTTP for ; Mon, 28 May 2007 21:35:55 +0200 Message-ID: <1180380955.465b2f1b54bc7@ssl0.ovh.net> Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:35:55 +0200 From: m.kornig@sondal.net To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: My First Lojban Words 1.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 3.2.6 X-Originating-IP: 89.225.12.46 X-Spam-Score: 0.6 X-Spam-Score-Int: 6 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4759 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: m.kornig@sondal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Selon Vid Sintef : > However, we must have in mind the fact that most of the Lojban beginners' > learning & practicing occur on the internet and not in a language school or > in a shopping mall. The process of learning Lojban really differs from that > of learning e.g. Spanish. There are far more online resources & > opportunities for practicing Lojban with people than on a street or in a > cafe. A Spanish learner may primarily want to know the word for e.g. "train" > since he will have to distinguish such a frequent word in order to be > "guided" in a real Spanish language society. On the other hand, a Lojban > learner may want/need to know rather various internet-related words than > "train" since she will have to figure them out and use them by herself at > the very first stage of communicating with other Lojbanists in > Lojban(otherwise she won't be able to even enter > & observe the real Lojbanic sphere). And then she is free to jot down other > vocabularies of preference as her own personal strategy. If she likes dogs > and would like to know the word for it, she'll simply look up it on gimste. > If she somehow can't find it there, she'll ask other Lojbanists through this > mailing list, for example. Vid, may I think your argument it bit further? It probably holds not just for "train" or "dog" but for *any* word, doesn't it? You can look up all common words up in dictionaries, I suppose. So why don't people just learn *all* vocab by themselves from dictionaries? My answer to this question would be: Because it's not very effective. Yes, I believe learning words from dictionaries is not very effective. > I'd distinguish between "general usefulness" and "personal usefulness". Of course. That's why I call it "MY first Lojban words". > I > understand your view which sees words like "dog" to be basic. It might > depend on people's perspectives, though. It's ideological to think that the > basic & useful concepts of animal in this world are decisively "dog", "cat", > and "mouse". Why not simply "animal" (danlu) as a more elementary concept? I wanted to have *some* animals in my list. Originally I also had "cow", "fish", "bird" and "horse". Then I cut it down to "dog", "cat" and "mouse". "animal" is too general, I'd say. I reckon "dog", "cat" and "mouse" are more frequently used in everyday language than "animal". Also, it's easier to explain what a "dog" is, i.e. by showing a picture of a dog (and everybody will understand immediately), than what "animals" are. Remember I don't want learners to rely essentially on translations to grasp the meaning of a word. I'm convinced that learning a language from pictures is far more efficient than learning from translations. > Also I think you can omit "boy" and "girl" if you mind the number of items > in the list, since beginners may acceptably express those concepts as > "little man" (cmalu nanmu) and "little woman" (cmalu ninmu), respectively. > If you list "room" (kumfa) you can omit "lounge" (zutku'a) and "kitchen" > (jupku'a) since expressions like { barda kumfa } and { jukpa kumfa } as > respective alternatives of "lounge" and "kitchen" are understandable ({ > barda } and { jukpa } ars already on your list, right?). My worry is that learning a combination of words like "cmalu nanmu" is not very effective since most people say "nanla". Sure you can make yourself understood, but you won't be able to understand others. > Actually I was planning myself to make something like yours in Polish, > Turkish, Swahili, Chinese, and Japanese. But I haven't started anything for > it. Simply because I know I haven't yet got clear perspective of Lojban to > rightly tell of its essences. Interesting. So you speak all these languages??