From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Sep 08 16:54:32 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:54:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EDWDn-0003Z7-8z for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:54:23 -0700 Received: from web81310.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.85]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EDWDl-0003Yz-LP for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:54:23 -0700 Received: (qmail 68835 invoked by uid 60001); 8 Sep 2005 23:54:19 -0000 Message-ID: <20050908235419.68833.qmail@web81310.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [68.88.32.165] by web81310.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:54:18 PDT Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 16:54:18 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: lojban's difficulty To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <925d175605090815037f1116e0@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Spam-Score: -1.4 (-) X-archive-position: 10547 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list The main problem with oearning Lojban is the almost complete lack of teaching material. We have some devices for pounding in vocabulary -- which some people have found helpful but as many have found totally useless (and which are misleading in the form given). Given some reasonably decent teaching devices (or better, of course, some teachers)Lojban is no worse than any 0other language. The sort of classifications to which xah lee points are just Lojban's version of what in other languages comes up as gender or some similar thing (but, by the way, you don't need {loi}; {jisra} is "a quantity of juice" with the quantity uspecified so {lo jisra} is just some quantity of juice, just what is wanted. To be sure, juice is one of those things where it is hard to tell individual quantities from collectives of quantities, so {loi} also works.) I would like to think that becoming proficient in Lojban meant developing some sense of logic or semantics (or pragmatics, why not) but the discussion in these groups shows rather clearly some times that it does not. Nor, alas, do people who are pretty good in those areas necessarily have an easier time learning Lojban. Like every language, it has its quirks even if it is more regular than most and more inclusive of odd categories like tense or collectivity (but not, note, of massness). The more languages you know, the easier Lojban should be (unless they are all in one family, where the family traits get burned in as how things work) (Good teaching material probably come down hard on places where Lojban differed from -- or conflicted with -- the native language: English material would be a bit different from French, a lot different from Chinese and a whole Hell of a lot different from Hopi, and, of course, Loglan material would be very simple indeed.) Lojban is also short on hooks -- we don't come to Lojban knowing some Lojban words and phrases the way we do for most European languages and most other mahjor languages as well. The claim that the way the gismu are constructed makes them more learnable is at least open to question if not demonstrably untrue and there is very little else to grab onto (attitudinals and the like work a bit and {na} and {mi} and maybe {do}}. But that is an early obstacle that may be minor compared to some of the later obstacles in other languages, where Lojban moves smoothly (once we figure out what is needed -- the unsettled state: not just that things change but that we don't really know how to do a lot of things -- is still a problem after 50 years, though getting smaller even as we speak.) To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.