[lojban-beginners] Re: A Newbie's First Impressions

[Travis Garris <ptg_thug@yahoo.com>]

From Jon:

"Well, nis. is pronounced as neice, there are no
silent letters in lojban."

I didn't realize this.  I was pronouncing "klaudias."
as Claudia, not Claudias.  I guess "porcys." would
sound like you owned more than one to the
English-speakers.

From Greg:

"Try http://www.lojban.com/twiki/pub/Files/SoundFiles
for stuff spoken by many different people."

Thanks, that will help.

"In French, where there is no /E/ at the end of words
(or is it no /e/? no matter anyway), we pronounce
Porsche as {porc.}"

I would normally cry foul since Porsche isn't French,
but in America we pronounce the final "s" on Paris.  I
guess that just shows that Porsches are more important
in America than France is.

From Jan:

"Well, you need all those articles to have an
unambiguous grammar.  Without the articles you
couldn't tell sumti apart from parts of tanru."

I'd argue that you can be just as unambiguous in
natural languages with less "articles".  Though, I
would have to admit that the rules of grammar for
Lojban are so much simplier than those of natural
languages.  Ofcourse, as Lojban ages, I suspect that
several of these strings of "articles" may find
themselves as new words, words that purists may not
like.

"la klaudias. pu dunda su'o re cukta le la tonis.
tamne"

Yes, I am aware that this is simplier, but it is more
ambigious.  I did want to imply that the books were
given as a single unit and that only one of Tony's
cousins was involved.  I know where the "lo" should
go, but I couldn't figure out where the "pa" should
go.

But this, like everyone else's comments, seems to
imply that the active voice is preffered.  This is
true in English literature, but in daily conversation
people occassionally use the passive voice.  Sometimes
the passive is used with good reason.  We may say "The
light can be seen from here" instead of "One can see
the light from here".

Having said all that, I'm not advocating all Lojban be
in the passive voice.  I don't expect to use the
passive voice myself in Lojban any more often than I
use it in English.  You can re-read our emails and see
that we have rarely used the passive.

"se-te-ve-xe is usually much more useful"

I hadn't gotten that far, yet.

"Try jbofi'e (lojbanic fish) at
http://etud.epita.fr:8000/~poss_r/lojban/jboski.html";

Another good link that will help, thanks.

"Well, this is a case where the use of fa-fe-fi might
be justified. But maybe you should not go by the
english (or german, it's the same there) sound of it.
I find this shifting around of the sumti more
confusing than helpful. That might just be me,
though."

Well, since this is all living, it does entirely
depend on how the culture will understand it.  There
are perfectly valid sentences in English which can
confuse native English speakers (wish I could come up
with an example).  How would you use "ba'e" in "mi
dunda xo ma la klaudias.".  Would it come before "xo"
and stress "xo ma", or is there something better?

Travis Garris
Durham, NC, USA


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