[lojban-beginners] Re: Recommended method of learning...

["Brett Williams" <mungojelly@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Zen Holy <tech.angell@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've recently gotten more serious about learning lojban in the last
> couple days and have been wondering what others would recomend I do to
> learn the vocabulary.


fi'i jbopre

(Welcome, Lojbanist!)


The hardest part of the vocabulary to learn is the gismu.

The cmavo seem like a very confusing collection at first, because
there are a bunch of different categories of grammar, but after you
get used to the selma'o (after you've read CLL a couple of times, for
instance) then what's hardest about them for a long time is the few
selma'o (BAI, FAhA, UI) with a lot of words.

Until you know the grammar, the cmavo list is not a useful reference.
It's useful as mnemonics once you know what the words mean.  But you
shouldn't expect for instance to look up "ke" and understand it from
the definition "start grouping of tanru, etc; ... type of ... ;
overrides normal tanru left grouping".  It's useful though if you come
across "ke" and you blank on it, you don't know if it's an attitudinal
or a number or what, and then the definition reminds you it's that
tanru grouping thingy.  If you need to look up a cmavo that you don't
understand its grammar, look it up in the CLL (under chapter 20 I
think it is, by selma'o).

BTW selma'o = se cmavo.  I like to say that to nintadni often because
it took me years to realize it.  Also brivla = bridi valsi, gi'uste =
gismu liste.  I guess in general be alert for lujvo you may have
learned before realizing they were lujvo!  It's a good opportunity to
effortlessly pick up some rafsi.

That's basically how I'd recommend learning the rafsi, is by learning
lujvo.  If you think about it, the rafsi have got to be a
proportionally pretty small task: Only some gismu have short form
rafsi, and to learn the rafsi of a gismu you only have to learn which
letters are chosen for the rafsi.  In a way you don't even have to
learn three letters, because a gismu is five letters, so you can learn
just which two letters aren't included.  And every lujvo you learn can
teach you two rafsi.  So I think rafsi come naturally if you let them.

But lujvo are of very minor importance anyway except in literary
Lojban.  That's one thing you should realize is that there are
different kinds of Lojban written in different places.  Even those of
us who are relatively fluent still have trouble reading the
literature; I don't know anyone who doesn't read with a dictionary.
On the other hand, IRC Lojban is very light and conversational and
routine (which isn't to say that deeper use of the language doesn't
happen there occasionally).  YouTube Lojban is just starting to
develop, and I would expect it to end up even simpler at first, since
we have to speak even faster.

So the main thing is to learn the words that you encounter.  There's a
group mind we have going on here in jbogu'e.  No one knows all of the
gismu, but we do know a lot of the same ones as each other.  It's
almost entirely an unconscious group process, so far: We each look up
gismu we say to each other that we don't know, and we of course tend
to say the ones that we learned from each other, so some words are the
words that are well known and often spoken.  Off the top of my head,
here are some that would be worth looking up right away if you don't
recognize them: cusku, tavla, gleki, xamgu, djica, zmadu, zdani,
citno, melbi, bangu... bangu (language) will often come up in
conversation, bongu (bone) you'll encounter in literature or not at
all (unless this mention triggers a bongu frenzy).

In summary, here is what I think about learning Lojban vocab: Learning
cmavo is really learning the grammar, except for a few piles of words
to gradually dig through (many of them thankfully quite unpopular).
You shouldn't intentionally study lujvo and rafsi at all, not for a
long time anyway, but it won't hurt to pay attention to lujvo that
come up and their rafsi.  The body of the task is the gismu.  It won't
hurt to study them with flashcards, but it won't succeed in teaching
you to recognize every one of them, either.  So do that for fun, but
also focus mostly on the gismu you encounter most often in actual use,
and learn them well.  Learn "cusku" inside and out; you'll need that
one.

And do speak with us somewhere.  I'm on Twitter now as @selckiku and
all of my tweets on that account will be in Lojban.  There's also an
account there named @gismu which is regularly tweeting gismu, so that
might be helpful.  There are a few little islands like that around
with a tiny amount of Lojbanic activity, and I'd like to see us
develop at least a few of them more.  Mainly though the IRC channel is
still where it's at.  The mailing list is where it's at for literary
Lojban, and #lojban on Freenode is where it's at for street Lojban. :)

mu'o mi'e la se ckiku