From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon May 28 06:59:51 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsfl8-0001Zz-Ln for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:44 -0700 Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com ([66.249.82.237]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsfkw-0001Zg-MQ for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:38 -0700 Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id t11so1124188wxc for ; Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:28 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; b=VdoG14weuOcNZlgX5botH9+X3XirasrL7uHnVW2w5jAqlWn6y1OlIqAtwogy6oJlmEG8bMkOTk138sAqIySarwp1WhVrd0JwWnshE19bDCqqR/O++FtRWS/iTApn9jwqDMmt/iWFKTFvOli8XEZpJ6UY9HqAY8XX+kDUTRB45pg= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; b=QOd2P6Z8B5kam2wjFR44fwUipNbH1bQQKOlrZgMa4oQprIu0V3SVacTmRit7SQ1IT5Z5oqTcKkeVmWLrVwEUmnksljyGkEBczYtty03/xtrsVQcFo4epwzjE88NMwVnqyjoNmrQFTwupfM+3zs2zSk0JBb7yZWtOy+MunFsGEqs= Received: by 10.70.39.2 with SMTP id m2mr8528955wxm.1180360767977; Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.9.19 with HTTP; Mon, 28 May 2007 06:59:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <2f91285f0705280659u3ba7d3fcm7ea5707c449fd7ec@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:59:27 +0100 From: "Vid Sintef" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: dicussions about basic vocabulary In-Reply-To: <1180323943.465a50670a68c@ssl0.ovh.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_106506_6630125.1180360767892" References: <1180323943.465a50670a68c@ssl0.ovh.net> X-Spam-Score: 0.1 X-Spam-Score-Int: 1 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4749 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: picos.picos@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners ------=_Part_106506_6630125.1180360767892 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 5/28/07, m.kornig@sondal.net wrote: > > Being a total Lojban beginner myself I've never tried > to discuss with someone over the internet in Lojban. > So I wasn't aware of these words. There could be more expressions which I'm not aware of but which are practical and therefore worth being memorised by beginners. Suggestions from veterans would be great but they mightn't have a particular enthusiasm to do that. One might just say: use the word frequency lists or join the IRC. I plan to create an online course for beginners > from this list. And I expect to have lots of pictures > there, some kind of picture dictionary. So most of > the words I've chosen so far are for objects you can > easily depict graphically. For this reason I've > deliberately omitted adverbials of time for instance. > Or connection words. Two things to note: (1) The types of objects that are going to be depicted. Take { zdani } as an example. Are you going to pick up a Western pastoral house, or a solemn Taj Mahal, or a lair with a wolf in it, or a den with lots of Italian mafias, or all of them? It's quite difficult a task to coordinate every possible cultural variety Lojban is allowing us to signify with a gismu, within one corresponding space of picture on a page. And we shouldn't really sacrifice the neutrality embedded in every gismu. (2) Lojban is principally structural, rather than atomic. We must be careful that the readers of your wordbook do not misinterpret a gismu like { pendo } to be "ein Freund/eine Freundin" itself as an atomic concept. The gismu signifies with its own place structure a relation between things, a state in which things are related rather by "freundschaftlich" in this case. The same goes for { denpa } or { stedu } etc. So, the pictorial representation of Lojban words will have to pay a special attention to their structuralism. I want to keep it as simple as possible and I > don't want to explain much (maybe anything at all!) > about grammar. > It's more about some basic vocab and about getting > to know the phonetic system of the language. A first > impression... Simplicity is important. But nonetheless we should not equate Lojban too much with natlangs. The beginners may well be expected to exert, from the start, their intelligence to realize that speaking Lojban is going to be a very unique experience than ordinary for them. So at least we might want to give them a mental note like "Lojban root words represent a state of relation between things, not things themselves". Such should be more impressive and interesting than simply indicating "xekri = black" which is erroneous anyway. People would be more tempted to learn a thing if they're shown how it is unique & worthwhile than how it is commonplace & uncreative. People would be intrigued if they're presented with some Lojban-specific sentence which is grammatically untranslatable into their own natlangs. One of the reasons I came to love Lojban is because I came to know that there are certain things which I wouldn't be able to describe without Lojban. Vid ------=_Part_106506_6630125.1180360767892 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 5/28/07, m.kornig@sondal.net <m.kornig@sondal.net> wrote:
Being a total Lojban beginner myself I've never tried
to discuss with someone over the internet in Lojban.
So I wasn't aware of these words.

There could be more expressions which I'm not aware of but which are practical and therefore worth being memorised by beginners. Suggestions from veterans would be great but they mightn't have a particular enthusiasm to do that. One might just say: use the word frequency lists or join the IRC.

I plan to create an online course for beginners
from this list. And I expect to have lots of pictures
there, some kind of picture dictionary. So most of
the words I've chosen so far are for objects you can
easily depict graphically. For this reason I've
deliberately omitted adverbials of time for instance.
Or connection words.

Two things to note:

(1) The types of objects that are going to be depicted. Take { zdani } as an example. Are you going to pick up a Western pastoral house, or a solemn Taj Mahal, or a lair with a wolf in it, or a den with lots of Italian mafias, or all of them? It's quite difficult a task to coordinate every possible cultural variety Lojban is allowing us to signify with a gismu, within one corresponding space of picture on a page. And we shouldn't really sacrifice the neutrality embedded in every gismu.

(2) Lojban is principally structural, rather than atomic. We must be careful that the readers of your wordbook do not misinterpret a gismu like { pendo } to be "ein Freund/eine Freundin" itself as an atomic concept. The gismu signifies with its own place structure a r elation between things, a state in which things are related rather by "freundschaftlich" in this case. The same goes for { denpa } or { stedu } etc. So, the pictorial representation of Lojban words will have to pay a special attention to their structuralism.

I want to keep it as simple as possible and I
don't want to explain much (maybe anything at all!)
about grammar.
It's more about some basic vocab and about getting
to know the phonetic system of the language. A first
impression...

Simplicity is important. But nonetheless we should not equate Lojban too much with natlangs. The beginners may well be expected to exert, from the start, their intelligence to realize that speaking Lojban is going to be a very unique experience than ordinary for them. So at least we might want to give them a mental note like "Lojban root words represent a state of relation between things, not things themselves". Such should be more impressive and interesting than simply indicating "xekri = black" which is erroneous anyway. People would be more tempted to learn a thing if they're shown how it is unique & worthwhile than how it is commonplace & uncreative. People would be intrigued if they're presented with some Lojban-specific sentence which is grammatically untranslatable into their own natlangs. One of the reasons I came to love Lojban is because I came to know that there are certain things which I wouldn't be able to describe without Lojban.


Vid
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