Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:55:43 -0800
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
From: Carl Lumma <carl@lumma.org>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban
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>> I actually would have preferred to see Lojban introduced with the 
>> natural language notion of nouns and verbs first.
>
>Does this not present the danger of Lojbanists having difficulty in
>coming to think of sentences in terms of sumti and selbri instead of
>nouns and verbs, and instead importing non-Lojbanic concepts into
>their understanding of Lojban?  I'm still mentally slapping myself on
>the wrist when I catch myself trying to build a Lojban utterance based
>on its English expression (which is troublesome of course, because
>it's hard to hold a concept in my head to be expressed in Lojban
>without an English expression popping into existence).  I'm still
>nothing like advanced enough in the language to be sure, but it seems
>that a good way to encourage Sapir-Whorf effects to manifest would be
>to attempt to forget everything you know about other languages and try
>to understand Lojban on its own terms.
>
>Intuitively, I would like to see this emphasised right at the
>beginning of Lojban beginners' courses -- "don't try to look for nouns
>and verbs in this language, nor for any other concepts from other
>human languages you know.  Looking for predicate calculus concepts is
>probably OK".
>
>Thoughts?

I said "Exactly" to this in my original response, but what I
should have said is, why not just use the iterative call and
response method of Pimsleur, and leave the grammar behind?

I don't remember any grammar in the first two German tapes.
The narrator would occasionally tell you what a words in a
phrase meant, that's about it.

-Carl