From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Oct 31 03:44:21 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:44:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1InB3S-0004Z9-2J for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:44:17 -0700 Received: from squid17.laughingsquid.net ([72.32.93.144]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1InB3C-0004Y7-N2 for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:44:05 -0700 Received: (qmail 11623 invoked by uid 48); 31 Oct 2007 03:43:38 -0700 Received: from c-75-68-233-37.hsd1.vt.comcast.net (c-75-68-233-37.hsd1.vt.comcast.net [75.68.233.37]) by webmail.ixkey.info (Horde MIME library) with HTTP; Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:43:38 -0700 Message-ID: <20071031034338.jbzyyjdi8gggcksc@webmail.ixkey.info> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:43:38 -0700 From: mungojelly@ixkey.info To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Learning x3 and beyond References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.1.4) X-Spam-Score: 1.8 X-Spam-Score-Int: 18 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 5767 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mungojelly@ixkey.info Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Quoting Alex Martini : > How do you usually study the later places in gismu? I find it's usually > pretty easy to remember the first few places with a keyword for the > gismu and some practice, but x4 and x5 tend to be harder than. I find it useful to think of a gismu as a collection of related roles. You can learn all of the roles separately, while at the same time understanding them as all forming a relation together. So for instance take tivni. The keyword is "television," which isn't even a verb in English, never mind a relation with four different places. .u'i What makes an occurance of "tivni" is four things: If you say "le tivni", you're talking about a broadcaster, someone who transmits television programming. If you say "le se tivni", you're talking about a television program, what it is that's broadcast. If you say "le te tivni", you're talking about a television station or channel on which the program is appearing. And if you say "le ve tivni", you're talking about something which displays the show so it can be watched, a television set. To bring the gismu "tivni" fully to life in your mind all you have to do is put those four things together and think of them as one relation. Easier said than done, it's true. Learning a gismu is undeniably more difficult than learning a verb, but once you've learned it you've also gained access to a more expressive tool. A gismu is just a large thing. (le'e gismu cu barda -- or is that malglico? barda fe le ka pluja?) It's perfectly possible to learn and use the places of the gismu each on their own, without having to use the whole gismu at once. For me, a gismu that I know very well is "gleki," x1 is happified by x2, to put it verbily. .u'i So since I'm trying to learn the second place of tivni, a television program, I can make a sentence like: .i mi gleki le se tivni .ui I like the television program. I can handle just that chunk of the gismu at once, to get comfortable with it. .i le mi ve tivni cu xekri My television set is black. And then put both chunks together: .i ta'e tivni la'e zoi .gy. Colbert Report .gy. fo le xekri The Colbert Report is habitually on my TV. So there I'm sort of using tivni verbishly, but I've just chosen those two places out of it to use. It's like there's a ridiculous variety of verbish shapes that can come out of that gismu. This is like Verb-Subject-Object, where the subject is a television program, and the object is the TV set that gets that-programmed-- that's just one of the weird verbs that tivni provides. .ui I'm not really answering your question, except that I'm practicing using "tivni." That's the only answer: Practice! You're going to have to pick up each part of the gismu a bunch of times in your mind before the whole thing is going to add up. Lojban is a hard language & I think it's worth it. .u'i co'o mi'e bret.