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Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:59:53 -0500
From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Towards Lojban for Beginners version 2.0
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Adam Chevalier wrote:
> I had considered making my own version of L4B to take care of some
> things that, personally, put me off.
> There were a couple of Excercises that were "gotchas" and you don't want
> those in learning material for beginners
> (Mistranslating taipei under the auspices of "a b sounds like a p in the
> local orthography" is a terrible excuse and it made it sound like Robin
> was showing off)

 > Of course, by reading this board for several months I know it wasn't
 > intentional.


Actually, LFB was written by Nick Nicolas and Robin Turner, and the 
example may have been used intentionally with international students 
(who probably know English well enough to use LFB) in mind, rather than 
to "show off".  The point is that the English pronunciation of foreign 
names is often NOT a legitimate basis for Lojbanizing that name.  You 
want the native/local pronunciation if possible.

> Some other recommendations:
>
> 1) Try not to emphasize the concept of malglico so much.

Absolutely, one should do so.  Lojban is NOT encoded English, and if one 
gets lazy, one will not be understood  (or will be intentionally 
misunderstood by some people who are literal-minded and don't like 
malglico).

> You /have/ to
> explain lojban in English terms in order to teach it to an English
> audience, so translating ninmu to x1 is a woman and scolding the learner
> for assuming it means an adult isn't right (by the way, we have a word
> for ninmu, its called female).

No. fetsi is the word for female, but is not limited to human(oid)s. 
ninmu is a female human(oid) being, not necessarily adult. nixli is 
expressly a girl (immature ninmu).  The definition of ninmu in the gismu 
list specifically says that it is not necessarily an adult, so a learner 
who assumes contrary to that definition probably deserves "scolding" 
(though preferably in a gentle, constructive tone).

> 2) Find ways to explain the concepts without resorting to "If you're a
> Mathematician, computer programmer, or a logician, its like these things."

For some things derived from formal systems, like lambda calculus, I 
suspect that it is difficult to manage this, but good luck.

> 3) Concepts and words related to language studies are confusing, please
> give some kind of definition for these concepts.

Technical terminology will often be opaque to someone not trained in the 
relevant field.  I was confused about grammar terms for years including 
the first couple of years AFTER I started separating Lojban from TLI 
Loglan.  And even worse, sometimes technical terms have different 
meanings in colloquial English (e.g. the classic misuse of "theory" by 
creationists).  The latter is why I went to using the Lojban words 
untranslated.  There really is no English translation of tanru that does 
the concept justice.

>     Anyway, what do you think, should we start updating it to reflect
>     the latest improvements to the grammar and the way lojban should be
>     taught?

The only approved change to the grammar is xorlo.

And there is no agreement on how Lojban "should be" taught.

I happen to like the way that Russian-written textbooks teach Russian, 
but it is considerably different from how American-written textbooks do 
so.  Each is tailored to a certain style of teaching and a certain 
audience.  "better" requires that you fill in ALL the places of xamgu, 
including the standard.  "correct" (drani), is even tougher; it also has 
property and situation places besides the standard.

If someone wants to write a new intro textbook that embodies their own 
ideas for teaching the language, then go ahead and do so.  But write it 
anew rather than "updating" what doesn't need an "update", and call it 
something different.  Unlike CLL, which is part of the formal language 
definition, beginning textbooks need not all be written to the same 
standard.

lojbab

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