Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: lo do ckiku ma zvati

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 12:00:06PM -0700, Lindar wrote:
> > Not eliding those terminators makes even the simplest statements
> > seem horribly complicated. I believe that the best way to teach
> > elidable terminators is to teach them in such constructs as they
> > are NOT elidable. To tell someone "This word means this, but is
> > hardly ever used for this reason", likely tells that person
> > "This isn't important, don't bother remembering it". But to say
> > instead, "This new word here, which means this, is required in
> > the sentence for this reason", seems to myself to have more, um,
> > staying power.
> 
> I'm sorry, this is a horrible idea.
>
> In my experience I know this, and all of the newest teaching
> material reflects this. Teach terminators as if they're required,

That seems amazingly obnoxious to me; I doubt I'd have learned the
language in that case.

[snip]
> 2. "Well, now here's a cute trick. Right here, we don't actually
> need "ku", because it reads the same either way."
> 
> Sometimes you need it for random strange reasons with convoluted
> rules, or you learn that you always need it and sometimes it can
> be left off.
> 
> For pedagogical reasons, option 2 has proven time and time again
> to be the better alternative that results in much better
> diction/word-choice/ phrasing. Please don't teach or use {cu}
> until you've gotten well past things like abstractions, and even
> then, don't use it unless it's absolutely necessary for the sake
> of brevity (ex: {.i lo nu mi broda be lo brode be lo brodi bei lo
> brodo be lo brodu cu co'e} instead of {.i lo nu mi broda be lo
> brode be lo brodi ku bei lo brodo be lo brodu ku be'o ku be'o ku
> be'o ku kei ku co'e}).

You forgot {vau}.  The correctly terminated version of that
sentence, according to jbofihe, is:

  .i lo nu mi broda be lo brode be lo brodi ku bei lo brodo be lo
  brodu ku be'o ku be'o ku be'o vau kei ku co'e vau

Placing {ku} after every sumti is absolutely insane to me, let alone
placing {vau} everywhere it's required (which you're clearly not
doing, so you're not following your own advice).

If you think teaching that is resulting in better learning of the
language, I'm going to want some significant evidence, because as
far as I know almost all of the best speakers learned Lojban from
the CLL, which introduces {cu} almost immediately (chapter 2,
section 5) but not {ku} until much later (chapter 6, section 2).
The first elidable terminator I can find mentioned is {ke'e}, in
5.5.

Having said all that, there's lots of activity in #lojban I'm not on
top of today; if there are a bunch of people who are great with the
language and learned with "all elidable terminators required (except
vau, I guess)", please have them speak up here.

-Robin

-- 
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