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[lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban
On Feb 28, 2007, at 10:01 PM, Carl Lumma wrote:
Neither of these are interactive, but they are more or less the
standard way to learn the language. A project called ICSL (Intensive
Course in Spoken Lojban) was working on making a more interactive
course based on conversations in comic strip format, but it's been
stalled since December or so.
It would be great to have a Pimsleur-style audio course. One
of the existing courses could be simply translated into lojban
and released as mp3 on the web. How hard could this be, I wonder...
Pretty difficult. It's not just a matter of translating the material.
Each course
is different and takes into account the grammatical differences
between the
target and native languages, as well as the differences in what
sounds are used
and how.
For example, if we were to prepare a Pimsleur style course in Lojban
we would
have to introduce the Lojban concept of sentence structure (as
relations or brivla)
in comparison to the English structure (as nouns with verbs and
modifiers).
What I'm saying is that it's not just a matter of teaching
vocabulary. That would
be trivial. And not that useful. The Pimsleur method also teaches how
to put
the words together -- I wouldn't quite call it grammar because they
don't ever
say the rules right out, you just sort of pick them up. That's the
hard part in teaching
a language.
I would love to see such a CD made, since the biggest hurdle to
learning Lojban
at the moment (I opine) is the lack of good learning and practice
material
for the beginner. pe'i doi rodo ??
I must say, I find the sounds I've heard so far rather uninspiring.
I don't know whether to chalk that up to poor speaking or poor-
sounding language, or maybe just internal resistance I need to get
over. The process of taking phonemes from the World's languages
smacks bogus to me, but I'm not aware of any concrete model/example
of phoneme sets being fine-tuned in natural languages, so I can't
make much of a case yet.
My understanding is that Lojban uses sounds that are just pretty common
across the source languages. Nothing special about them, they just
happen
to exist in many of the worlds major languages.
As for the sound, I expect this is because there's not terribly much
fluent
Lojban recorded out there. My go at recording Lojban is at my website
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alexjm/reader0.html
I'm not at all fluent in Lojban, but I like to think I can read my
own writing
out loud pretty well. A lot of the better Lojbanists tend to be
working on
byfy* stuff, like writing out exactly how the cmavo are supposed to
be used, so
they don't do a lot of recording. Also, most Lojbanists are solo
students so it's
a written language for them -- not a spoken one.
* byfy or BPFK is short for baupla fuzykamni (language-planner type
of responsible-committee)
the committee of people that are "expanding the current
documentation". A little like a steering committee.
See also http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=baupla
+fuzykamni&bl
I'm also a bit put out at the use of traditional punctuation marks
for something else. I'm about to try and read about what that
something else is.
Thanks everyone for the pointers so far,
-Carl
It's not that complex -- the full stop (period) is a mandatory pause
and the comma
is a syllable break. What it usually comes down to is that you stick
a comma
into names when the syllable rules wouldn't break it up how you want it.
And the full stop is mostly just there for automated parsing to mark
the end of
a name and to keep words that start with vowels from being "eaten" by
their neighbors.
It has to do with how the words are broken up in a stream (like when
you speak),
instead of when you write them out all nicely with spaces in between
them.
It's also ok to omit all the full stops in a text. I'm pretty sure
the translation of "Alice in Wonderland"
does, and I know xorxes (Jorge Llambías) tends to write that way and
he's a
pretty well respected Lojbanist. I personally think it looks less
cluttered that way, and
they are obvious from context if you use spaces when you write.
In practical terms, just remember that
- any word that starts with a vowel must have a full stop before it
- any cmene must end with a full stop
Any time you read a full stop, you have to at least make a glottal
stop, which is a sort of
tic in your throat. Most of the time the pause comes naturally
because we put a little space
in the word boundary as it is, and don't have to worry about it.
mu'o mi'e .aleks.