Pragmatically, I use {cu} all the time (sometimes even when it's completely unnecessary e.g. "mi cu klama"). {cu} is a shortcut and in spoken language people tend to prefer shortcuts.
In the end, I agree with lindar. Teach {ku} so that students get it rooted in their minds that lo is an opening bracket and ku is the closing bracket. Afterwards start teaching the shortcut method that results in shorter/easier text but sloppier structure.
When I think of cu vs ku the first thing that comes to mind is html vs xhtml. The former is all about getting results, the latter is about clear-cut, rigid, structure.
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:18 PM, Jonathan Jones
<eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Robin Lee Powell
<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 09, 2010 at 03:54:58PM -0700, Lindar wrote:
> While you and others may not agree, I have spent a LOT of time in
> the past two months teaching students, and I find that they all
> have a much better grasp of terminators, and thus have fewer
> problems understanding the grammar in general, when {cu} is not
> taught. It is, in my opinion, a crutch that people rely upon far
> too much. One should learn "is not" before "isn't" and "I am"
> before "I'm" lest people for some reason start confusing
> your/you're in both meaning and pronunciation. =D
>
> Also, CLL is not meant for learning. It's a lovely resource, but
> many in the modern and active teaching community including myself
> and kribacr believe that it teaches Lojban incorrectly, and starts
> habits which result in very bad Lojban (namely in that a
> frighteningly large number of people believe {cu} is required at
> all ever). I can't say much for L4B, except that I prefer the more
> modern Wave Lesson to it as I have seen first hand how it produces
> better results and speakers with a better understanding of the
> language.
On the one hand, I've become interested in y'all's way of teaching
terminators; I can see the advantages.
On the other hand, I'd really like you to stop saying things like
"it produces better results and speakers with a better understanding
of the language" until you've shown me where all these people who
speak it better than me or clsn or Broca or xorxes are.
(Or, at least, myself at my best; I'm out of practice, but I've
spoken in the language continuously for hours in the past.)
What you've got, as far as I can tell, is an interesting pedagogical
technique that produces good early results, but is totally untested
as to its results when students try to reach real expertise.
If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.
-Robin
The last time I was in the IRC room, his first utterance directed at me was to speak English so he could understand what was being said. His second was to bring up the {ku} vs. {cu} topic out of nowhere. I think he feels rather strongly about this issue.
--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.
.i.a'o.e'e ko klama le bende pe denpa bu