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From: Alex Martini <alexjm@umich.edu>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 10:46:24 -0500
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On Mar 1, 2007, at 12:30 AM, Carl Lumma wrote:

>>>> Neither of these are interactive, but they are more or less the
>>>> standard way to learn the language. A project called ICSL  
>>>> (Intensive
>>>> Course in Spoken Lojban) was working on making a more interactive
>>>> course based on conversations in comic strip format, but it's been
>>>> stalled since December or so.
>>>
>>> It would be great to have a Pimsleur-style audio course.  One
>>> of the existing courses could be simply translated into lojban
>>> and released as mp3 on the web.  How hard could this be, I wonder...
>>
>> Pretty difficult. It's not just a matter of translating the material.
>> Each course is different and takes into account the grammatical
>> differences between the target and native languages, as well as the
>> differences in what sounds are used and how.
>
> How important are these effects?  And is there even an
> equivalent in lojban yet?
Sorry -- what effects? Do you mean like sound shifts?

I expect I wasn't very clear on "differences in what sounds are  
used". I meant
the differences between Lojban sounds and English sounds --two important
ones are how you say the vowels and the {x} sound in Lojban.
>
>> For example, if we were to prepare a Pimsleur style course in
>> Lojban we would have to introduce the Lojban concept of sentence
>> structure (as relations or brivla) in comparison to the English
>> structure (as nouns with verbs and modifiers).
>> What I'm saying is that it's not just a matter of teaching
>> vocabulary. That would be trivial. And not that useful. The
>> Pimsleur method also teaches how to put the words together -- I
>> wouldn't quite call it grammar because they don't ever say the
>> rules right out, you just sort of pick them up.
>
> Exactly.  Why wouldn't this work in lojban?
It would definitely work, I just meant to say that it would be a little
more work than just translating an existing CD into Lojban. I started
to work out some ideas in the shower this morning, and you probably
could translate an existing CD but just change the commentary.

For example, in the Mandarin Chinese CD, when introducing the phrase
"Do you speak English" and the Mandarin translation the narrator points
out the pitch of each word, since it's important in Mandarin. He also  
points
out the word {ma} which makes a question in Mandarin. In Lojban, you
could say {xu do se bangu la lojban} as well as {mi se bangu la  
lojban}, and
point out that {xu} makes a yes/no question in Lojban.
>
>> I would love to see such a CD made, since the biggest hurdle to
>> learning Lojban at the moment (I opine) is the lack of good
>> learning and practice material for the beginner.
>
> Indeed.  I imagine most people's eyes are glaze over by the
> third paragraph about gismu and sumti (I've known about lojban
> since 1999 and I still had to look those up).
Remembering the difference between the terms sumti and selbri was  
probably my
first big hurdle in learning Lojban. For a beginning book, the fact  
that every sentence
is actually using first-order logic is pretty much irrelevant. I  
actually would have
preferred to see Lojban introduced with the natural language notion  
of nouns and verbs first.
>
>> As for the sound, I expect this is because there's not terribly much
>> fluent Lojban recorded out there. My go at recording Lojban is at my
>> website
>> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alexjm/reader0.html
>
> Best I've heard to date.
ki'esai!
>
> I have some "official" Loglan tapes around here somewhere.
> If I had a cassette player I'd dig them up.
> -Carl
Do you have a friend who has a cassette deck? Lojban and Loglan are
close enough structurally that, if the Loglan tapes are good, we  
could follow
their format pretty closely.

mu'o mi'e .aleks.