[lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban

[Carl Lumma <carl@lumma.org>]

>>> 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.

How important are these effects?  And is there even an
equivalent in lojban yet?

>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.

Exactly.  Why wouldn't this work in lojban?

>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.

Indeed.  I imagine most people's eyes are glaze over by the
third paragraph about gismu and sumti (I've known about lojban
since 1999 and I still had to look those up).

>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

Best I've heard to date.

I have some "official" Loglan tapes around here somewhere.
If I had a cassette player I'd dig them up.

-Carl