[lojban-beginners] Re: dicussions about basic vocabulary

[m.kornig@sondal.net]

Selon Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com>:

> When I started to study Lojban and try to grasp what Lojbanists were
> saying or had written on the internet, I realised that I needed more
> knowledge of those "little words" like {se} or {be} (which are quite
> representative of what you called the "basic functions" in Lojban) than
> knowledge of how to say "mountain" (the need of which I have rarely come
> across so far). I was more interested in those ubiquitous cmavo found in the
> actual Lojbanic conversations than in how to express "radio". Also, when I
> first visited the Lojban Wikipedia or tried to explore the Lojban version of
> lojban.org for some reading exercise, I was instantly dismayed, because I
> couldn't comprehend the very navigation vocabularies themselves.
>
> What I would expect from a language that claims to be easy to learn is, at
> least, not that it provides a list of words which are out of the actual &
> everyday usage in Lojbanistan and later disappoints me with the fact that
> what I have memorised from the list are actually not of great usefulness.

Yes, "usefulness" is what should be the criterion for
the basic word list. I agree. And yes, maybe we could
drop some of the vocabulary I have retained so far.
I need some time to think about it.

>
> > Remember
> > the My-First-Lojban-Words list currently as 121
> > items only. And I don't want it to become neither
> > too "hi-tech" nor too big.
>
>
> I'm not proposing a scheme to transform your list into something macho. My
> attention is: because for the most people the web is the prime resource for
> learning & exercising Lojban from the beginning, people would be perplexed
> and unhappy if they have memorised the meaning of {ckana} but cannot figure
> out what Lojbanists have actually written as basic indicational &
> navigational expressions on various lojbanic web materials. In the realm of
> the constructed languages, the importance of words like "passport" or
> "tomato" isn't necessarily of the utmost. People may be interested in how to
> say "tomato" in Lojban; but not everybody may. If that ("tomato") is what
> one would personally like to express for whatever reason, it should suffice
> that he/she memorises that word from the gimste as a personal strategy. What
> they ought to be firstly provided with, though, is a list of words which (a)
> they may not deftly predict to be important or which (b) they might not
> quickly nor accurately find out. The former refers to e.g. { mu'o }, and the
> latter e.g. { mi na jimpe } which is already in your list. { mu'o } can
> always be found on ma'oste but most beginners may not be aware of its
> usefulness, so they have to be informed of it somehow. { mi na jimpe } for
> beginners should obviously be an important expression but hard to come up
> with since it's not on gimste, so there's a reason it has to be on your
> list.
>
> > Is there anything less important we could drop?
> > Does a beginner need much more?
> >
> > May I suggest that for every additional word someone
> > proposes you also propose a word to be dropped from
> > the list of 21? Okay?
> >
> > Could someone please sort out the Lojban equivalents
> > for these 21 words?
>
> Picking up them from the terminology pages on lojban.org should be easier. I
> would suggest these:
>
> selcukta (document)
> selsku (content with meaning = pictures, sounds, texts ...)
> joncku (web page)
> telckujo'e (links in a document)
> ralju ckupau (main page / home)
> sisku (search)

Okay.

> as well as these IRC phrases:
>
> coi ro do (hi everybody)
> co'o ro do (bye everybody)
> doi + NAME (identifies intended listener)
>
> .ua (discovery = Oh! / I see!)
> .ua nai (confused = Huh? / Do tell!)
> .ui (happy = :-) )
> .ui nai (unhappy = :-( )
> sai (attitudinal modifier: moderate intensity = very)
>
> As to the 21, I would keep these:
>
> e-mail/web address
> username
> password
> login
> message/comment
> discussion/talk
>
> It'd be also cool if every beginner knows these:
>
> xu (Is ... true?)
> ki'a (what is ...? / ... is what?)
> po'u (which is ...)
> ku'i (but/however ...)
> mu'a (for example)
> ta'o (by the way)
> ke'o (please repeat what you've said)
>
> .e (sumti connective = and)
> gi'e (gismu connective = and)
>
> vi / va / vu (location distance: short / medium / long)
> zi / za / zu (time distance: shot / medium / long)
> pu / ba (time interval: past / future)

Vid, these are very interesting thoughts. I agree with most
of your points.

Being a total Lojban beginner myself I've never tried
to discuss with someone over the internet in Lojban.
So I wasn't aware of these words.

There are two other aspects I'm concerned about:

(1) I plan to create an online course for beginners
from this list. And I expect to have lots of pictures
there, some kind of picture dictionary. So most of
the words I've chosen so far are for objects you can
easily depict graphically. For this reason I've
deliberately omitted adverbials of time for instance.
Or connection words.

I need some time to think about the words you suggested
and how they would fit in.

(2) I want to keep it as simple as possible and I
don't want to explain much (maybe anything at all!)
about grammar.

It's more about some basic vocab and about getting
to know the phonetic system of the language. A first
impression...

It's certainly not going to be a real beginners
course. I don't expect people to be able to "speak"
Lojban after taking this course. Nor to be able
to communicate effectively.

This is why most of the items currently in my list
are just isolated words. There are 114 actually. I
have added only 7 short phrases like "ko denpa" or
"mi'e..." or "mi na jimpe". Some of these are not
even real sentences, you see?

Again: I need to think this over. Maybe we
kind find some kind of compromise...

Martin