Re: Lesson 1

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

coi .arnt.

> Reading through the lesson on Lojban names, I found that you had forgotten to
> mention the possibility of using brivla anywhere that cmene goes.  For
> instance, you could say "mi'e melbi", or "la stace cu citka lo cirla".
>
> But on the other hand, the beginner may find it too hard to start with brivla
> already in lesson 1...

In the current version I've just introduced it as a matter of interest at the
end, and recommended the normal Lojban practice of either chopping off the last
vowel or adding S (actually I don't always do this myself, but again for
beginners some overkill is useful).   As for {mi'e}+brivla, I don't think it's
common enough to be worth mentioning, especially since {mi'e} is in a class of
words not yet covered anyway - I only put it in because of its obvious
usefulness.  In fact I intend to take this attitude with cmavo in general,
teaching the bare minimum to express what you want, rather than dealing with
whole areas at a time - if people want that, they can read the Book.

My current thinking on cmavo to be taught is as follows:

Lesson
1  -  basic attitudinals, la, mi
2  -  le, cu, zo'e, do
3  -  ko, xu, ma, mo, na
4  -  li, lo, loi, lei, so'a/e/i/o/u
5  -  xo, su'i, ni'u (for telling the time)
6  -  nothing new here apart from maybe .i - it'll be a revision and
vocabulary-expanding lesson
7  -  basic pro-sumti and sumti connectives, goi, nu, kei
8  -  na'e, nai, ru'e, cu'i, sai, cai (with a few more attitudinals)
9  -  pu, ca, ba, zi/a/u, vi/a/u, ku,
11 - non-logical bridi connectives, a few discursives, quotation
12 - revision
13 - conversion and place tags
14 - du, du'u, poi, po'u, noi, no'u, pe
15 - a few BAI modals
16 - lujvo construction
17 - logical tanru, bridi and selbri connectives {zo'o.ii}
18 - revision

I reckon this should be enough for a beginners' course, in that it should give
those who complete it the ability to:

(a) express most things they want (if not always in the exact way they want it);
(b) read most of the Lojban on the list with the help of the web glosser;
(c) add to their knowledge by looking up areas that interest them in the book.

An example of (c) is that once you've got the basic idea of the tense system,
it's easy to look up things like interval properties and event contours, while if
you try to tackle the whole lot, all those cmavo get mixed up (in fact I still
can't temember half of them!).

co'o mi'e robin.