Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning alexkoz@gmail.com does not designate 173.13.139.236 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.13.139.236;
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 00:33:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alexander Kozhevnikov <alexkoz@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
cc: lojban-list@lojban.org
Subject: Re: [lojban] Ease of learning for different native languages
In-Reply-To: <CAEimHHCT87n2YH1SN5HLGB31bt3DDiHwbSBHkziBLhTgeGdC6A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LN8.2.00.1409271641580.3313@jEEED>
References: <CAEimHHCT87n2YH1SN5HLGB31bt3DDiHwbSBHkziBLhTgeGdC6A@mail.gmail.com>
User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LN8 1167 2008-08-23)
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Spam_score: -2.0
X-Spam_score_int: -19
X-Spam_bar: --
X-Original-Sender: alexkoz@gmail.com
X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com;       spf=softfail
 (google.com: domain of transitioning alexkoz@gmail.com does not designate
 173.13.139.236 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=alexkoz@gmail.com;
       dkim=pass header.i=@gmail.com;       dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=gmail.com
Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Precedence: list
Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com
List-ID: <lojban.googlegroups.com>
X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417
List-Post: <http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/post>, <mailto:lojban@googlegroups.com>
List-Help: <http://groups.google.com/support/>, <mailto:lojban+help@googlegroups.com>
List-Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/lojban
Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com
List-Subscribe: <http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/subscribe>, <mailto:lojban+subscribe@googlegroups.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:googlegroups-manage+1004133512417+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com>,
 <http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/subscribe>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1
X-Spam-Score: -1.9 (-)
X-Spam_score: -1.9
X-Spam_score_int: -18
X-Spam_bar: -

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014, Luke Bergen wrote:
> Do we have any native German (or other languages) speakers present? How 
> easy/hard was learning Lojban for you.

Native Russian speaker here. But here's the thing:

I have not yet learned Lojban, I am just starting to seriously delve into 
it after years of hovering over it thinking how nice it would be to learn 
it.

ji'a Russian was my first/native language, but I've lived in America since 
I was 7.5 or so, so I am vastly more proficient in English (but my English 
proficiency has consistently been considered better than my peers since 
around 5th/6th grade and my Russian proficiency, I'm also told, is better 
than that of other natively-Russian kids with similar histories of 
development. I attribute this to my parents being good at 
nurturing/maintaining my mental development, but enough rambling). Point 
is, my perspective is not representative of a native Russian speaker. I 
think my perspective is more accurately seen as that of a 
natively-bilingual Russian-English speaker.

Since I am only starting learning lojban, so I cannot yet answer this 
portion of your question properly. First and foremost thought is that the 
early-bilingual experience makes understanding meanings/nuances easier, 
because meaning/thought and language is decoupled earlier and more 
intuitively/deeply in your mind when your language development is like 
that. But I'll do my best to remember to provide a follow-up once I 
actually feel I've learned lojban to a minimally usable extent, and then 
again once I feel I am truly fluent in it.

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014, Luke Bergen wrote:
> Any thoughts or impressions on how non-english languages aid/hinder
> learning lojban vis-a-vis it's lack of ambiguity?

Again, from the fluently-bilingual-since-childhood perspective, I think 
specifically that bilingualness makes learning any language easier (see 
prior paragraph), but lojban especially because lojban seems, from my 
naive understanding of it, to be better able to efficiently convey nuance 
and disambiguate/distinguish concepts, in large part "vis-a-vis it's lack 
of ambiguitiy". Because I learned a second language as a kid, I think that 
I am pretty good at figuring out meanings from context - being able to 
convey the distinctions that one language can make that another language 
cannot, however, is in my experience often problematic. I think (again 
somewhat naively) that lojban will prove for me to be a major boon in that 
department, but sadly I think that the biggest benefit it can have there 
is with someone else who knows lojban. E.g. I can think of several 
instances where I felt/thought wistfully: "if only I and this other person 
could both fluently speak lojban, then I could explain to them the meaning 
of this phrase from the other language much easier." (I think I have 
enough "meta" knowledge about lojban to confidently think it can do that 
even while not knowing enough of lojban to know how exactly it would.)

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> E.g. I can see the need in explaining {co'i} earlier for Russian 
> speakers than for English speakers so that the first ones find more 
> familiar features sooner. The same for free word order which in some 
> ways is more limited in English and thus not that relevant. May be a few 
> more features but these two are most noticeable.

Maybe this is just because I am prone to thinking that more mental 
difficulty is better, or some other wierd aspect of my cognition, but I am 
inclined to think that for the most part, teaching people the familiar 
stuff first will just make them complacently willing to remain 
ignorant/deficient in the unfamiliar, and will have an adverse effect in 
the long term for people picking up the whole language.

Regards,
mi'e .aleksandr.kojevnikov. mu'o

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.