Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20040327234628.0304aec0@pop.east.cox.net>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 23:58:56 -0500
To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org
From: Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: lojban vs. esperanto: ease of learning
  vocab
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At 07:58 AM 3/27/04 -0500, MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote:
>In a message dated 2004-03-27 5:21:52 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>ecartis@digitalkingdom.org writes:
>
> > lojban vocabulary, for chinese-speaking people at any rate, has to be as
> > easy or more easy than esperanto vocabulary...
>
>greg, i accept with some reservation that a chinese would find lojban
>grammar easier to learn than esperanto, because of lojban's
>optionality (is that a word?), but why would lojban vocabulary be
>easier for chinese to learn than esperanto?

The word recognition algorithm apparently makes a difference for 
them.  Three different Chinese native speakers have said that the Lojban 
vocabulary seems easy for them, and two have said specifically that it was 
easier for them than Esperanto (which I assume they have studied).  One of 
them is quite vociferous about it on sci.lang Usenet newsgroup

>esperanto words have lots
>of information (part of speech, affix meanings, similarity to other
>words) that help identify the meaning.

Part of speech is not useful to Chinese speakers, and they apparently don't 
see the similarities to other words as easily as European language speakers 
do.  (On the other hand, you don't see the similarity between Lojban words 
and their English cognates, which for many of the words seems unbelievable 
to me).

No one has mentioned the root count; I suspect that Esperantists have to 
learn a lot more than 1300 roots to be skilled in the language (whereas 
Lojbanists seem not to have to learn all 1357 of ours).  Lojban uses 
affixes too, of course.

>and there is a lot more
>cohesion or system in esperanto roots than in gismu, which have NO
>system at all.

What system is there to Esperanto roots, other than that they usually come 
from some vaguely similar European word from one of several languages?

The gismu have the system of all being 5 letters long, and being of either 
of two forms CVCCV or CCVCV.

>the fact that english and other languages i know were used in
>creating the gismu has not been all that helpful in learning the
>vocab.  the forms of the gismu just have no (or too little) similarity
>to the source language forms.

Others have had different experiences on this (including me).

lojbab

-- 
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org