[lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban

["Turniansky, Michael" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

  Well, yes and no.  There really aren't nouns and verbs.  The same
words function as nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs.  For example, in
English, "blue" is general considered to be an adjective, and "sky" is
generally considered to be a noun.  But in the sentence, "The paint
store ran out of sky blue", suddenly sky functionas as an adjective and
blue the noun.  The equivalent in lojban  is "lo tsani blanu" and "lo
blanu tsani". In tanru sumti, all except the rightmost brivla function
as adjectives, and the last as a noun, and in tanru selbri, all but the
rightmost brivla function as adverbs, and the rightmost as a verb "lo
blanu tsani cu sutra bajra" => "The blue sky runs quickly"  "lo tsani
blanu cu bajra sutra" => "The sky blue is runningly fast" .  The key
here is that they FUNCTION as certain parts of speech, but can take on
any of those roles, depending on the slot, so the language doesn't have
any fixed nouns, verbs, adjecvtive, or adverbs.

                        --gejyspa

-----Original Message-----
From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
[mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of Pierre Abbat
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 1:28 PM
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: learning lojban

On Thursday 01 March 2007 11:37, Karl Naylor wrote:
> Intuitively, I would like to see this emphasised right at the
> beginning of Lojban beginners' courses -- "don't try to look for nouns
> and verbs in this language, nor for any other concepts from other
> human languages you know.  Looking for predicate calculus concepts is
> probably OK".

There are nouns and verbs in Lojban, and also conjunctions,
prepositions, 
articles, and pronouns. There are other parts of speech that don't exist
in 
English, such as the predicate marker (which exists in Tok Pisin), 
terminators, and spoken quotation marks. There are no adjectives or
adverbs 
in Lojban, and nouns and verbs are used very differently.

German is too close to English (if you're learning German, already
knowing 
English) to compare learning Lojban to a Pimsleur German tape. You might

compare it to learning Turkish or Ojibwe.

English is a nounish language, while Lojban is a verbish language. (I
don't 
know the proper terms.) Consider "clock". If I use "clock" as a verb,
it's 
not something a clock does; it's something done using a clock. But if I
use 
{junla} as a verb, it is something a clock does: it ticks out time
intervals 
with some precision, using some mechanism (or electronism). And if I use
the 
Navajo word as a verb, it is something a clock does: it moves slowly in
a 
circle.

phma