On Jun 20, 2006, at 11:30 PM, Chris Capel wrote:
[ li'o ] Surely we can do better. Maybe something like a very slowly graded series of stories that gradually introduce more and more Lojban vocabulary? (They can be mixed with with the first language, and then switch over to all simple Lojban, or perhaps start out illustrated, and then introduce more and more advanced Lojban.) That's just one wild idea. Chris Capel
Not so wild, Chris -- that was one of my ideas when I started writing the Lojban Reader (which I may as well point out for any new folk on the list is at http://umich.edu/~alexjm/ ). My other reason was that I tend to retain things better if I use them, so writing with my new Lojban was a way to use it.
If anyone is interested, the transition approach to teaching Lojban is an interesting idea. One way to implement this would be to write many short texts that teach small bits of grammar and vocabulary but don't depend on each other. The other way would be to write it as a series or self contained long book that started with the native language and ended with pure Lojban. Of course, we could also use a mix of the two, and write levels of books which don't depend on concepts from each other in the same level, but do depend on ideas learned in the books on the previous level.
Anyhow, as far as I know we don't even have a traditional style (boring?) textbook to learn Lojban from. The only large collections of material for learning are the Lojban for Beginners website, the Complete Lojban Language, and What is Lojban. The first and second are a bit out of date (no xorlo), and have complementing lackings. The first one doesn't describe all the features of the language, but is clearly meant as a teaching tool. The second describes everything, but not in a way very conducive to learning from. And the third one is really more of a tool to explain the basics of how to learn Lojban than a textbook to learn from, based on what I have read of it. I think that I saw a draft textbook floating around on the wiki some time ago, but I'm not sure if it's accurate anymore, or was much to begin with.
mu'o mi'e .aleks.