Welcome, Ron! We're glad you're here. For grammar, "Lojban For Beginners" is good, and so is the PDF of the first 19 pages of the Level Zero Booklet. http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/book1.html http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=89 For vocabulary, the best resource that currently exists is flashcard learning. Supermemo is available for Windows, Palm OS, and other systems. As you saw in my LJ post which you mentioned, we're working to create vocabulary training that will do more than that, such as a program that places vocabulary tests in complete sentences. But in the meantime, vocabulary skill is no less indispensable, and flashcards are the only game in town. Supermemo is quite a bit better than nothing. http://www.supermemo.com/ If you use the Firefox web browser, it can serve as a super-fast Lojban compendium at your fingertips. Go to the Bookmarks menu and select "Manage Bookmarks". Create a folder called Lojban and drag it into the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. Bookmark the following sites in that folder: http://www.lojban.org/jboski/ http://www.hypermetrics.com/pikmin.html http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/ http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/gismu.txt http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/cmavo.txt http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/cmavo_selmaho_order.txt http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/rafsi.txt http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/oblique_keywords.txt http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/hobbies/lojban/flashcards/big_list http://www.lojban.org/publications/draft-dictionary/NORALUJV.txt http://www.lojban.org/irc/ http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=198 http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Home+Page&bl http://www.nemorathwald.com/jbocradi/jbocradi.html http://teddyb.org/cgi-bin/moo_ssh.html http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014107847567658722055%3A3enx_7t3upo Please let us know of anything we can do to help you. If you get stuck, or even if you just feel de-motivated, speak up! -Eppcott On 12/2/06, Ronald Guida <ronguida@mindspring.com> wrote:
Hi. My name is Ron; I heard about Lojban and I have started to become interested in learning it. I saw the recent post on the Lojban home page that mentioned the difference between "learning" a language and "acquiring" a language. Currently, the only language I know is English. I am trying to figure out the best or fastest way to learn Lojban. It appears to me that the resources don't exist yet for me to learn Lojban through natural means (i.e. to "acquire" it), so I am wondering what is the next best thing. Right now, I am thinking that I should study the grammatical structures of Lojban first, before studying a bunch of vocabulary. The reason for this is I believe children learn grammar before vocabulary. Consider this English sentence prototype: "The X-ons are Y-ing in the Z." Based on grammar and word-formation heuristics, most likely X names a set (in plural), Y is an action being carried out at present, and Z is a location. This information creates context; the listener can use that context to help infer what X, Y and Z are. Presumably, children who have figured out grammar can learn new words by making inferences. I am thinking that I can learn Lojban grammar structures by constructing sentence prototypes that do not contain any actual gismu or lujvo. For example, ".i le X ca Y le Z". I believe Y is a connective, acting in the present, that connects X and Z. Is this correct? -- Ron