[lojban-beginners] Re: My First Lojban Words 1.4

[m.kornig@sondal.net]

Selon Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com>:

> However, we must have in mind the fact that most of the Lojban beginners'
> learning & practicing occur on the internet and not in a language school or
> in a shopping mall. The process of learning Lojban really differs from that
> of learning e.g. Spanish. There are far more online resources &
> opportunities for practicing Lojban with people than on a street or in a
> cafe. A Spanish learner may primarily want to know the word for e.g. "train"
> since he will have to distinguish such a frequent word in order to be
> "guided" in a real Spanish language society. On the other hand, a Lojban
> learner may want/need to know rather various internet-related words than
> "train" since she will have to figure them out and use them by herself at
> the very first stage of communicating with other Lojbanists in
> Lojban(otherwise she won't be able to even enter
> & observe the real Lojbanic sphere). And then she is free to jot down other
> vocabularies of preference as her own personal strategy. If she likes dogs
> and would like to know the word for it, she'll simply look up it on gimste.
> If she somehow can't find it there, she'll ask other Lojbanists through this
> mailing list, for example.

Vid, may I think your argument it bit further?

It probably holds not just for "train" or "dog" but for *any* word,
doesn't it? You can look up all common words up in dictionaries,
I suppose. So why don't people just learn *all* vocab by
themselves from dictionaries?

My answer to this question would be: Because it's not very
effective. Yes, I believe learning words from dictionaries is not
very effective.

> I'd distinguish between "general usefulness" and "personal usefulness".

Of course. That's why I call it "MY first Lojban words".

> I
> understand your view which sees words like "dog" to be basic. It might
> depend on people's perspectives, though. It's ideological to think that the
> basic & useful concepts of animal in this world are decisively "dog", "cat",
> and "mouse". Why not simply "animal" (danlu) as a more elementary concept?

I wanted to have *some* animals in my list. Originally I also had "cow",
"fish", "bird" and "horse". Then I cut it down to "dog", "cat" and "mouse".

"animal" is too general, I'd say. I reckon "dog", "cat" and "mouse" are
more frequently used in everyday language than "animal". Also,
it's easier to explain what a "dog" is, i.e. by showing a picture
of a dog (and everybody will understand immediately), than what "animals"
are. Remember I don't want learners to rely essentially on translations
to grasp the meaning of a word.

I'm convinced that learning a language from pictures is far more
efficient than learning from translations.

> Also I think you can omit "boy" and "girl" if you mind the number of items
> in the list, since beginners may acceptably express those concepts as
> "little man" (cmalu nanmu) and "little woman" (cmalu ninmu), respectively.
> If you list "room" (kumfa) you can omit "lounge" (zutku'a) and "kitchen"
> (jupku'a) since expressions like { barda kumfa } and { jukpa kumfa } as
> respective alternatives of "lounge" and "kitchen" are understandable ({
> barda } and { jukpa } ars already on your list, right?).

My worry is that learning a combination of words like "cmalu nanmu"
is not very effective since most people say "nanla". Sure you can make
yourself understood, but you won't be able to understand others.

> Actually I was planning myself to make something like yours in Polish,
> Turkish, Swahili, Chinese, and Japanese. But I haven't started anything for
> it. Simply because I know I haven't yet got clear perspective of Lojban to
> rightly tell of its essences.

Interesting. So you speak all these languages??