Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:41:18 -0700 (PDT)
To: Garrett Jones <alkaline@bigfoot.com>
Cc: lojban@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] learning lojban
In-Reply-To: <8oicsd+3is8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0008301529400.411-100000@simba.math.ucla.edu>
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From: "James F. Carter" <jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU>
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Wow, 360 words in less than a week!  That's rather fast progress; you must
know how to memorize.  

I'd recommend, though, getting most of the places on the first pass.  Some
places are "obviously" less useful than others, and it's a point of debate
right now what should be done about those places, but clearly on transitive
relations (e.g. x1 eats x2) the x2 place is essential, and on double actor
transitives (e.g. x1 forces x2 to do activity x3) x3 is also essential.  
Many "verbs of motion" have the form "x1 moves from x2 to x3 (other
places...)" or "x1 carries x2 from x3 to x4 (etc.)"

Watch for sets of semantically related words (like houses and body parts
and containers) that have similar places.  But there are always annoying
exceptions.

For places that you skipped memorizing, you can often find a <BAI>
(preposition) to glue it on.  If there's no <BAI> maybe you should memorize
that place.  The BAIs would be one of the most important sets of words to
be memorized.

James F. Carter        Voice 310 825 2897	FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90095-1555
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On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Garrett Jones wrote:

> 
> I have just recently begun learning lojban (last friday). I have
> mostly concentrated on memorizing gismu. I have memorized at least 360
> so far. I am only memorizing the words with their x1 places at the
> moment, and i'll do the other places later. One thing that has been
> the most difficult in memorizing the words is their final vowel. As a
> native english speaker, i'm not used to having to know a final-vowel.
> What different approaches has/is everyone taking to learning lojban?
> 
> 
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