From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Jun 16 15:40:38 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:40:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FrMzW-0000Qp-My for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:40:38 -0700 Received: from phma.optus.nu ([166.82.175.165] helo=ixazon.dynip.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FrMzV-0000Qa-0A for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:40:38 -0700 Received: from [192.168.25.19] (unknown [192.168.25.19]) by ixazon.dynip.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD712CD813 for ; Fri, 16 Jun 2006 18:40:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: mi'e rai'n Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 18:40:17 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 References: <8C85F0CF4E7BFF2-1B60-1262@MBLK-M30.sysops.aol.com> In-Reply-To: <8C85F0CF4E7BFF2-1B60-1262@MBLK-M30.sysops.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200606161840.18900.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: -2.3 (--) X-archive-position: 3270 X-Approved-By: phma@phma.optus.nu 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 15 June 2006 23:34, lastaidkit@aim.com wrote: > mi'e rai'n {rai,n}. {rai'n} is not possible in Lojban; the apostrophe occurs only between two vowels. > not likely? **** How much work is invloved in learning the language? It > sounds as if its just a matter of learning vocabulary It isn't. The grammar is completely different from that of any other language (except, of course, Loglan). It has parts of speech such as terminators and a predicate marker; it has a peculiar way of making compound words. But it's smaller than that of any natural language and doesn't have exceptions that grew up over centuries (e.g. in Spanish a feminine noun takes "la" unless - Jorge, correct me - it begins with a stressed vowel: el alma, el agua). > But I'll try to help with the vocabulary. What do I have to know? What he meant is that there aren't enough words to say everything. For instance, take the birds. The gimste has names for two galliforms (zo jipci .e zo xruki) and two anseriforms (zo datka .e zo gunse) and that's it. If you want to say "A flock of warblers flew overhead", you have to make up a word. "The whippoorwill is a nightjar" - there's a word for nightjar (ctecmocpi) but none yet for whippoorwill. phma