[lojban-beginners] Re: Getting in to the Lojban mindset

[Zifre <kmicklas@gmail.com>]

coi rodo

I have also been learning Lojban for a couple of months now, using
Lojban for Beginners and the gismu list on smart.fm. Initially I had
the same problem. My solution, I found, is to talk to myself. Whenever
I see things around me, I think or whisper a sentence about what I
see. For example, when I nearly broke my thumb doing a handspring, I
said:

.i mi cortu lo xantamji be mi ri'a lonu xance plipe

I have no idea how correct this is or if it is a good way of saying it
(any suggestions would be appreciated), but it helps me get used to
the Lojban grammar. The more I do it, the more it makes sense and the
more it comes naturally to me. Nearly everything about Lojban just
makes so much sense. The key is to try not to think about the English
in your head. When you want to say something, don't think of an
English sentence and then translate it. If you don't know the Lojban
words, look them up later. When you are reading, don't translate to
English in your head. If you don't understand it, just keep going and
concentrate on the words you do know (it okay to look up words
though). In general, I think that translation is not very useful,
because it gets you into a mindset of having English as a medium
between your thoughts and Lojban. I think that a lot of people learn
best through immersion, and unfortunately, that's not really possible
with Lojban. (I am working on a long interactive "slideshow" that
teaches Lojban without the use of any other languages. I have no idea
how well it will work, but hopefully it will be kind of like
immersion)

I should note that languages come very naturally to me, so maybe not
everyone will learn quite as fast. Part of it may be that I tend to
use a lot less language in my though process than most people do, so
English is not quite so ingrained into my mind. In some cases, simple
Lojban sentences come to me just as naturally as English sentences. On
multiple occasions, I have forgotten the English word for something
yet remembered the Lojban word (or more commonly, the Spanish word,
which is also not my native language).

fe'o mi'e zif

On Oct 16, 3:37 am, mashers <m...@mashley.net> wrote:
> coi ro do
>
> I'm about 75% of the way through the "What is Lojban" book, and I'm
> absolutely fascinated by this language. However, I'm really struggling
> to think like a Lojban speaker. Reading the examples given in the
> manual, I am starting to be able to translate phrases with some degree
> of accuracy, but anything more complex than a basic bridi just does
> not make logical sense to my English brain. For example, sentences
> containing complex sumti are almost incomprehensible to me despite the
> fact that I know the vocab and understand the syntax. It's actually
> the way the relationships are expressed which my brain does not seem
> to be capable of understanding or processing. Needless to say,
> expressing anything complex is impossible for me as I have no idea
> where to begin constructing complex concepts in Lojban beyond the
> basic sentence frame structure.
>
> So, does anyone have any suggestions for how I can begin to
> reprogramme my brain? I'm aware that after 27 years of exposure to
> English, my thought patterns are based on English and it will take
> time to start understanding and formulating concepts in a different
> way. I just have no idea how to begin to do this!
>
> Just to give a bit of background, I am a native English speaker. I am
> a trained and practicing Speech and Language Therapist (so linguistics
> and cognition are my speciality). I am dyslexic, dyspraxic and
> somewhere on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum, but
> fortunately that does not inhibit my passion for linguistics to any
> significant degree :-)
>
> Thanks in advance for any help!

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