This is exactly why I can't stand the idea of teaching {cu} right at the beginning. I still catch myself thinking things like {ta cu gerku} because I got into the bad habbit of thinking of {cu} as being like "is"/"does".
On Jul 6, 2010 8:06 PM, "Lindar" <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:--
Robin, it's because you're from the older generation. Everybody that
is actively involved in teaching (ask tomoj, kribacr, maybe even
vensa, any of the new blood) is teaching {.i lo brode ku broda} for
that very reason. It's easier to teach "you need these now and here's
a handy shortcut" rather than "here's the shortcut and later we're
going to teach you the weird exceptions when you can't use that
shortcut". It's been proven through a lot of teaching that terminators
are easier to learn when {cu} is introduced later, and for 90% of
examples, one doesn't even need it unless an abstraction is in the x1
place.
In fact, most of the new generation -does- speak that way ({.i lo
brode ku broda}) just so the newer students will see terminators being
used. We tend to actively discourage the use of {cu} unless it's
allowing elision of two or more terminators, because then students
start to internalise {cu} as English "is" or "am", and then you start
seeing confused newbies that don't actually know how to terminate that
say things like {mi cu dunda zo'e zo'e} (I have actually seen stuff
like this).
Besides, even if we -are- talking about brevity, it's the same thing.
There's no difference in length between {.i lo broda ku brode} and {.i
lo broda cu brode}, but the former develops better habits later on.
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