From ptg_thug@yahoo.com Tue Apr 22 11:37:20 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:50:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from web13008.mail.yahoo.com ([216.136.174.18]) by digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.12) id 1982ds-0006xQ-00 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:37:20 -0700 Message-ID: <20030422183719.62722.qmail@web13008.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [138.162.0.44] by web13008.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:37:19 PDT Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:37:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Travis Garris Subject: [lojban-beginners] A Newbie's First Impressions To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-archive-position: 227 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: ptg_thug@yahoo.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners I've run across Lojban before, and I like the idea behind it. I've just recently started learning it. I suspect that there are lots of programmers in the Lojban community, and that we are probably all drawn by the same thing. I'm just another programmer. First off, I have to say that learning a language in silence is quite hard. Yes, I don't know anyone who speaks or cares to speak Lojban. But that aside, I'm not very good at phonetics (which is weird since my generation grew up with phonetics in schools, before the "Hooked on Phonics" craze). I think I am pronouncing some of these words correctly, but trying to use Lojban phonetics to spell cities or names... I think I'll just use "y" everywhere. One of my problems in this area is the following words used as examples in "Logban for Beginners": nis. and porc. I would expect "nis." to be pronounced as "knee". It is supposed to be Nice, France. J'ai étudié français for duex ans, and I thought that Nice was pronounced as "niece". How to represent that in Logban, I have no idea. "porc." is supposed to be the brand of car, Porsche, which is two syllables. Should it be "porcys." in Lojban, I have no idea. My first impression of Lojban is it is littered with articles. Perhaps there are more elegant forms of phrasing sentences, but so far I've learned the following: fe lei su'o re cukta pu dunda fi le pa tamne pe la tonis. fa la klaudias. Ofcourse, this sentence may have some articles in the wrong order, I'm just learning the language. And yes, I did put it in the passive voice and attempted to do the past tense just to add more articles. This leads into my next observation: why does a language that prides itself on being unabmigious have a Zen-like approach to verb tense. To say "mi klama" in no way tells you when that happens. I can understand allowing such cases to exist, but the beginner's guide paints a picture that this neutral case is cultrually preffered. So far this baffles me. There are a few other things that seem out of place. I like that each number uses each of the five vowels in turn, but they use apparently random consonants. And I find myself pronouncing "xa" and "ze" very similarly. While conversational Lojban (atleast elementary) can be littered with articles, I love the power in fa, fe, fi, fo, fu. Any sentence can be turned into a procedure or function call. This is what appeals to programmers. "dunda fa la djan. le cukta la klaudias." This may not be cultrually sound in Lojban, it is a grammatical challenge in English. You run the risk of confusing any parser with the verb conjugation and prepositions required. When all sentences are put in this passive, verb-first format, a computer could very easily parse Lojban text (sorry for not using bridi, selbri, or other Lojban-specific terms, I'm not confident yet). I do have a question. I may be getting ahead of myself, but the lessons so far haven't specifically spelled this out, so I wasn't sure how it was done. "mi dunda fi la klaudias. fe xo ma" Can I use "xo" and "ma" together, and does their order matter ("ma xo")? And before anyone yells foul, I haven't been exposed to any Lojban culture outside of the beginner's guide, so saying "I gave Claudia how many what?" works to direct the listener's attention better than "I gave how many what to Claudia?" Travis Garris Durham, NC, USA __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo http://search.yahoo.com