From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon May 28 10:14:57 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 28 May 2007 10:14:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsio3-0002YR-Gp for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 10:14:57 -0700 Received: from 25.mail-out.ovh.net ([213.186.37.103]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hsio0-0002YJ-64 for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 28 May 2007 10:14:55 -0700 Received: (qmail 19067 invoked by uid 503); 28 May 2007 17:12:14 -0000 Received: (QMFILT: 1.0); 28 May 2007 17:12:14 -0000 Received: from b6.ovh.net (HELO mail84.ha.ovh.net) (213.186.33.56) by 25.mail-out.ovh.net with SMTP; 28 May 2007 17:12:14 -0000 Received: from b0.ovh.net (HELO queue-out) (213.186.33.50) by b0.ovh.net with SMTP; 28 May 2007 17:14:49 -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 19:14:49 +0200 Message-ID: <1180372489.465b0e096a5aa@ssl0.ovh.net> Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 19:14:49 +0200 From: m.kornig@sondal.net To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: dicussions about basic vocabulary 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: 4753 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 : > 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. The word frequency lists: I will have a look. Might help us. > 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. Words having several meanings can actually be found in most languages. This is not specific to Lojban, I think. Usually, beginners start to learn one meaning only. And then, they may or may not discover other meanings later as they progress. Among others things (like number of words, grammar and cultural knowledge) this is what makes the difference between a beginner and an proficient user. What I plan to do is the following: On the first page where the new words is introduced I have only one picture (in our case a typical or average house in some culture). Then when it comes to exercises, I present other pictures if possible from other cultural backgrounds. > (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. Here again, I think a beginner does not have to know the "whole story" right from the beginning. He does not have to know the entire place structure, for instance. One place (or the first two places maybe) should sufficient. Later he will discover more places and might start to appreciate the richness of Lojban. From my own experience these are actually the highlights of learning (a language): when you suddenly realize a generalisation or a surprising use of a concept in a totally different field... > 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. Well I don't know much about Lojban yet. But... from what I have learnt so far it's not SO much different from other languages I know. Sure the names like "gismu" are unique. But in other languages you have the verb as the central element. And verbs, for instance in German, can have none or one or two objects. There are similarities... Also you have the concept of "root words" in other languages. Or the same word which can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or an adjective in another. > 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". I'm not so sure that many people will actually be able to understand and appreciate this statement... > Such should be more impressive and > interesting than simply indicating "xekri = black" which is erroneous > anyway. More impressive... or more confusing. > 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. I speak three languages (to a reasonably good level). And I know lots of examples where you can express something quite easily in one language and have considerable difficulties in translating it into the other. This does not intrigue or impress me too much. Vid, I seems that we two have somewhat different views. I respect your views and can understand them. Actually, I find it interesting to talk to you. Martin