From lojban-beginners+bncCJKRpP31BRDmoujlBBoEvJakmg@googlegroups.com Sat Oct 16 13:56:33 2010 Received: from mail-yw0-f61.google.com ([209.85.213.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1P7Dnp-0002iW-Mw; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:56:32 -0700 Received: by ywo7 with SMTP id 7sf1062991ywo.16 for ; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:56:24 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received :mime-version:received:received:date:in-reply-to:x-ip:references :user-agent:x-http-useragent:message-id:subject:from:to :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=Pwlb3G6P6gZpa6r1vQfmuhi/TSh1kyZxBj4a4ZWIHsI=; b=jNRZPZuJgTpiBQAxvyuF+eCdSGigO/SIxuZE4pgi9G0CXPrlyV4EGtDV7bX7rOP9wG mAMHt4O1KbryJLK9s4h6Kiy3GvU92XJf3AT5l8FF0JtFT3EpLkwWr/e9Ns5amOOb9SX8 uqPcrQVjglxoRXXk5cZTanbFHPlsxJuOX1nVA= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:mime-version:date:in-reply-to:x-ip:references :user-agent:x-http-useragent:message-id:subject:from:to :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=Scq0S5e0hpEhoin4mg0ORoAsnNJ0KGHzWvPVXsbSDyqJqutczJcybqVdvceWjYNMaP 8J7DnTEQRsxfVg9Q2OBO8wc/ZRDaOQsyfvnLR7iyr20OIAUV/w7M68lDxbEOwMDD+4HZ nnnwiKMmQpNiJw77joW6UMph82qM3NhGdEhUM= Received: by 10.151.63.1 with SMTP id q1mr121871ybk.18.1287262566984; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:56:06 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.150.54.20 with SMTP id c20ls2714509yba.5.p; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:56:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.151.12.10 with SMTP id p10mr734336ybi.1.1287262566440; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:56:06 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.90.104.4 with SMTP id b4mr40061agc.13.1287239768662; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:36:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 28g2000yqm.googlegroups.com with HTTP; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:36:08 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:36:08 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: X-IP: 68.142.49.116 References: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.24 Safari/534.7,gzip(gfe) Message-ID: <9ae20d2b-f26e-4888-98e2-8bf832f647a9@28g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Getting in to the Lojban mindset From: Zifre To: Lojban Beginners X-Original-Sender: kmicklas@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com; contact lojban-beginners+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable coi rodo I have also been learning Lojban for a couple of months now, using Lojban for Beginners and the gismu list on smart.fm. Initially I had the same problem. My solution, I found, is to talk to myself. Whenever I see things around me, I think or whisper a sentence about what I see. For example, when I nearly broke my thumb doing a handspring, I said: .i mi cortu lo xantamji be mi ri'a lonu xance plipe I have no idea how correct this is or if it is a good way of saying it (any suggestions would be appreciated), but it helps me get used to the Lojban grammar. The more I do it, the more it makes sense and the more it comes naturally to me. Nearly everything about Lojban just makes so much sense. The key is to try not to think about the English in your head. When you want to say something, don't think of an English sentence and then translate it. If you don't know the Lojban words, look them up later. When you are reading, don't translate to English in your head. If you don't understand it, just keep going and concentrate on the words you do know (it okay to look up words though). In general, I think that translation is not very useful, because it gets you into a mindset of having English as a medium between your thoughts and Lojban. I think that a lot of people learn best through immersion, and unfortunately, that's not really possible with Lojban. (I am working on a long interactive "slideshow" that teaches Lojban without the use of any other languages. I have no idea how well it will work, but hopefully it will be kind of like immersion) I should note that languages come very naturally to me, so maybe not everyone will learn quite as fast. Part of it may be that I tend to use a lot less language in my though process than most people do, so English is not quite so ingrained into my mind. In some cases, simple Lojban sentences come to me just as naturally as English sentences. On multiple occasions, I have forgotten the English word for something yet remembered the Lojban word (or more commonly, the Spanish word, which is also not my native language). fe'o mi'e zif On Oct 16, 3:37=A0am, mashers wrote: > coi ro do > > I'm about 75% of the way through the "What is Lojban" book, and I'm > absolutely fascinated by this language. However, I'm really struggling > to think like a Lojban speaker. Reading the examples given in the > manual, I am starting to be able to translate phrases with some degree > of accuracy, but anything more complex than a basic bridi just does > not make logical sense to my English brain. For example, sentences > containing complex sumti are almost incomprehensible to me despite the > fact that I know the vocab and understand the syntax. It's actually > the way the relationships are expressed which my brain does not seem > to be capable of understanding or processing. Needless to say, > expressing anything complex is impossible for me as I have no idea > where to begin constructing complex concepts in Lojban beyond the > basic sentence frame structure. > > So, does anyone have any suggestions for how I can begin to > reprogramme my brain? I'm aware that after 27 years of exposure to > English, my thought patterns are based on English and it will take > time to start understanding and formulating concepts in a different > way. I just have no idea how to begin to do this! > > Just to give a bit of background, I am a native English speaker. I am > a trained and practicing Speech and Language Therapist (so linguistics > and cognition are my speciality). I am dyslexic, dyspraxic and > somewhere on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum, but > fortunately that does not inhibit my passion for linguistics to any > significant degree :-) > > Thanks in advance for any help! --=20 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= Lojban Beginners" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@= googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= -beginners?hl=3Den.