Re: Online Learning

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>I have been following lojban for the past few years.  I have also been
>following and delving into some other projects such as esperanto.  In my
>opinion, something that is greatly lacking in the lojban community is a means
>to learn the language easily.

Agreed.

>For many people learning a language is about interaction,
>not memorization.

Probably true for most people %^).  However, our experience with Lojban
has been that by far the critical path on learning the language is getting
enough vocabulary in order to interact with someone, using the grammar which
you have already learned.  There have been people who have shown good mastery
of the grammar within a month (and one person was writing good Lojban of
some density after a weekend), but the best success in vocabulary acquisition
I have seen is with LogFlash and intensive flashcard memorization, which
can give you mastery of 50-100 words a week, with 500 words  or so being about
the level where most people start writing in the language with some ease
and/or comfort, and 3000+ needed for anything close to conversational fluency.
I suspect that these numbers are true for Esperanto as well, and probably
higher for natlangs (I figure my Russian vocabulary is around 3000 words
but I am nowhere near fluency).

>One of the mechanisms employed by the esperanto community is
>an online postal course.  Is there anything "in the works" on the lojban
>front that could provide that sort of direct access to learning?

THe LOjban mini-lesson was intended to be the start of such a postal course.
Alas, the author suffered critical injuries in an auto accident, and while he
is still interested in Lojban, I do not expect him to again work on such
tasks.  So the minilesson remains unrevised, and certainly not fiollowed
on with a dozen more lessons.

I recently asked for volunteers to put together an answer key to the
minilesson; we don't even have that, and hence supporting those people who
have tried the minilesson remains above our capability  (aboiut 30 people
have sent answers and/or comments over the years, but they are largely
unread, much less responded to).  I view fixing up the minilesson as being
the first step in proceeding towards what you suggest.

One of my outlines for the textbook included a plan for the first 10-15 lessons
to be short and separable from the rest of the text, and perhaps they could be
written in the easy style of a postal course.  But no one has time to work
on the textbook until we get the other baseline books done (dictionary and
introductory book).  The introductory book will likely have at least a revision
of the minilesson.  If someone has proceeded beyond that point to write later
lessons, we could include them there.

In short, we  have lots of ideas, and no one with any time to work on them.
We also have had few people show a knack for writing to beginners at their
level, a must (it seems to me) for someone running a postal course on a
regular or systematic basis.

>So, perhaps
>this is a message to convince someone out there that knows enough lojban to
>get interested in such an effort.

There are people interested in using it, there has been no doubt,  But we
have no idea who could WRITE one, much less any volunteers with time to
spend on it.

>I think that once
>programs like the one I propose are setup and well established, then lojban
>will lose its poor reputation for being a scientific language with no beauty.
>I know --More--
>that's not true, but a lot of people that I try to explain the language to
>hastily make that judgement.  I hope it changes.

The primary answer to this, I think, is that for some reason, people seem
compelled to translate poetry rather than prose into Lojban.  Clearly people
see some kind of beauty in a language that they first look at the poesy of.
Unfortunately, translating peotry is probably harder than writing it, and
not all that many attempts seem as commendable in the results as the efforts
that were put forth to create them.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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