[lojban-beginners] Re: Alternative learning techniques

[Bob Slaughter <rslau@mindspring.com>]

> On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 Jay Kominek said: 
>
> Personally, I'm keen on suggesting that people just use the language.
> Try translating a short story, or your favorite recipe, or Firefox.
> Read existing texts with a word lookup tool, that kind of thing.
> It is a bit less flashy, but unlike Latin class in high school, you
> can translate anything you'd like.

Another translation target, instead of short fiction: game rules. I'm a fan of
the piecepack, ( http://www.piecepack.org/ ) and almost all of the game rules
there are GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), so no copyright issues as long
as you follow the license.

For those not familiar with the piecepack, a set is composed of a number of
player's piece groups (usually 4, but can be more). Each player has a set of 6
tiles, one side marked in a plain 2x2 grid, the other with values 0 through 5
and a suit icon. They have 6 'coins' with an suit icon on one side, and values
0 through 5 on the other. There is one pawn; and one die, marked as the tiles
and the coins (the '1' is a suit icon). Basic suits are Crowns, Arms, Suns, and
Moons. The piecepack itself is public domain.

At the moment, there are approximately 129 games using these parts, and 
sometimes other common game parts like dominoes and cards. A few rulesets also 
use Icehouse pieces; the Icehouse pieces aren't public domain, but they also 
support a community who have built up a large rule set 
( http://www.icehousegames.com/SLICK.html ). 

Pros of rules include short size, and a definite appreciation of precision in 
explanation. Cons include a fairly large specialized vocabulary, but a large 
chunk should be reusable in other games. I got the idea for this from a page 
on the Piecepack WIKI, where someone has started translating the piecepack 
gloasary ( http://www.piecepack.org/Glossary.html ) into Esperanto ( 
http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/EsperantoPiecepackGlossary ).

Comments? Interest?

-- 
Bob Slaughter, rslauGUESS@WHATmindspring.com http://www.mindspring.com/~rslau/
North Georgia Modurail: http://www.trainweb.org/northgamodurail/
In which language of the world does the word 'taxi' mean "I cannot drive"?
e'osai ko sarji la lojban fo lonu pilno -- http://www.lojban.org/