[lojban-beginners] A Newbie's First Impressions

[Travis Garris <ptg_thug@yahoo.com>]

I've run across Lojban before, and I like the idea
behind it.  I've just recently started learning it.  I
suspect that there are lots of programmers in the
Lojban community, and that we are probably all drawn
by the same thing.  I'm just another programmer.

First off, I have to say that learning a language in
silence is quite hard.  Yes, I don't know anyone who
speaks or cares to speak Lojban.  But that aside, I'm
not very good at phonetics (which is weird since my
generation grew up with phonetics in schools, before
the "Hooked on Phonics" craze).  I think I am
pronouncing some of these words correctly, but trying
to use Lojban phonetics to spell cities or names... I
think I'll just use "y" everywhere.

One of my problems in this area is the following words
used as examples in "Logban for Beginners":  nis. and
porc.  I would expect "nis." to be pronounced as
"knee".  It is supposed to be Nice, France.  J'ai
étudié français for duex ans, and I thought that Nice
was pronounced as "niece".  How to represent that in
Logban, I have no idea.

"porc." is supposed to be the brand of car, Porsche,
which is two syllables.  Should it be "porcys." in
Lojban, I have no idea.

My first impression of Lojban is it is littered with
articles.  Perhaps there are more elegant forms of
phrasing sentences, but so far I've learned the
following:

fe lei su'o re cukta pu dunda fi le pa tamne pe la
tonis. fa la klaudias.

Ofcourse, this sentence may have some articles in the
wrong order, I'm just learning the language.  And yes,
I did put it in the passive voice and attempted to do
the past tense just to add more articles.

This leads into my next observation:  why does a
language that prides itself on being unabmigious have
a Zen-like approach to verb tense.  To say "mi klama"
in no way tells you when that happens.  I can
understand allowing such cases to exist, but the
beginner's guide paints a picture that this neutral
case is cultrually preffered. So far this baffles me.

There are a few other things that seem out of place. 
I like that each number uses each of the five vowels
in turn, but they use apparently random consonants. 
And I find myself pronouncing "xa" and "ze" very
similarly.

While conversational Lojban (atleast elementary) can
be littered with articles, I love the power in fa, fe,
fi, fo, fu.  Any sentence can be turned into a
procedure or function call.  This is what appeals to
programmers.

"dunda fa la djan. le cukta la klaudias."

This may not be cultrually sound in Lojban, it is a
grammatical challenge in English.  You run the risk of
confusing any parser with the verb conjugation and
prepositions required.  When all sentences are put in
this passive, verb-first format, a computer could very
easily parse Lojban text (sorry for not using bridi,
selbri, or other Lojban-specific terms, I'm not
confident yet).

I do have a question.  I may be getting ahead of
myself, but the lessons so far haven't specifically
spelled this out, so I wasn't sure how it was done.

"mi dunda fi la klaudias. fe xo ma"

Can I use "xo" and "ma" together, and does their order
matter ("ma xo")?  And before anyone yells foul, I
haven't been exposed to any Lojban culture outside of
the beginner's guide, so saying "I gave Claudia how
many what?" works to direct the listener's attention
better than "I gave how many what to Claudia?"

Travis Garris
Durham, NC, USA


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