From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Nov 28 01:46:40 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sat, 28 Nov 1992 06:49:17 -0500 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4041; Sat, 28 Nov 92 06:45:56 EST Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 6254; Sat, 28 Nov 92 06:45:56 EST Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1992 06:46:40 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: My kids progress in learning English and Lojban X-To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: Since Dan asked, I'll give a brief status. I'll let others indicate whether they want repeated updates. I also will address And's question. The kids of course WANT to learn English, and are doing reasonable well by my standards. They can now count to 10 easily, and Angela rather more easily than Avgust can do larger numbers up to 50, with some errors. This is about the same as their level of numberical mastery in Russian. I thus observe that learning numbers is, at least in that age group, one of the first things learned and learned well (Avgust counts virtually anything that occurs in numbers greater than 1, and pretty much solely in English. He has experienced some language confusion in numbers: giving the English word 'five' when asked in Russian for the number (pyat'), but he still recognizes and uses the Russian word in a purely Russian conversational context.) The kids know several set phrases in English - politenesses like Please, and Thank you, good morning and good night, and generally use them appropriately (and remind me when I forget). They know perhaps 2 dozen concrete nouns in English well, and somewhat more perhaps by recognition only. They are starting to grasp how English does plurals, especially Angela, but they do not use them productively since they don;t create new English sentences yet. They do not y yet know any verbs, much less how to conjugate them, though they (and I) use "careful" as a verb in both English and Russian pidgin for "Be careful". They have imported several English words into Russian speech, declining them in the Russian manner (schoolbus being the one that comes to mind). No adjectives, though I think they recognize some of the color words, they still use only Russian for the colors. No, sorry - they know "big", though they do not use it, even with English words. Their pronunciation is pretty good, still accented, though not in the stereo- typical Slavic accent to my mind: Angela says her name almost as a French person would (given my French last name, this is not too unexpected). They have some trouble with English 'th', and love to make fun of the heavy English aspiration of stops (Angela is hilarious when she emulates my "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers ..." at high speed). As for Lojban, they both know "coi." (Greetings) and used it spontaneously last night when we had a conversation session and people arrived. Angela has learned "co'o", goodbye. They have probably got some recognition of a couple of Lojban words that we've explained to them, but we are as of yet using less Lojban around the house than we normally did before they arrived, so they get little exposure except in our weekly sessions. Our own Lojban is getting r rather rusty, amidst the onslaught of constant Russian use and study. Avgust seems to have an especially good sound mimickry ability, and has more readily been able to replicate sounds, words, and phrases in both Lojban and English more accurately than his sister on the first attempt. This is especially interesting in that he has speech problems in Russian with l/r and s/s'/sh distinctions (among others). These problems carry over, but less severely, to his normal English, but he seems to be getting over the problems in both languages very quickly. He rarely misprounounces Lojban words when mimicking them, though he hasn't much used them except in mimickry. His sister mimicks less well, and is more perfectionist - not liking to need correction - so she doesn't always want to try new phrases, and makes errors that we have to be sensitive in correcting. But she does learn well, and loves the compliments when she gets it correct. The words she actually knows, she then says spontaneously with a better accent and clarity than Avgust, even when he might have said it better the first mimicking repetition. Probably more than you want to know, but this is what comes to mind of a linguistic nature, and I figure it is better to let you people tell me what you do and don;t want to hear about (and how often). lojbab