[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lojban] Re: Towards Lojban for Beginners version 2.0



On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 7:34:54 PM UTC+4, lojbab wrote:
Adam Chevalier wrote:
> On Friday, February 22, 2013 6:59:53 PM UTC-6, lojbab wrote:
>
>     Adam Chevalier wrote:
>      > I had considered making my own version of L4B to take care of some
>      > things that, personally, put me off.
>      > There were a couple of Excercises that were "gotchas" and you
>     don't want
>      > those in learning material for beginners
>      > (Mistranslating taipei under the auspices of "a b sounds like a p
>     in the
>      > local orthography" is a terrible excuse and it made it sound like
>     Robin
>      > was showing off)
>
>       > Of course, by reading this board for several months I know it
>     wasn't
>       > intentional.
>
>
>     Actually, LFB was written by Nick Nicolas and Robin Turner, and the
>     example may have been used intentionally with international students
>     (who probably know English well enough to use LFB) in mind, rather than
>     to "show off".  The point is that the English pronunciation of foreign
>     names is often NOT a legitimate basis for Lojbanizing that name.  You
>     want the native/local pronunciation if possible.
>
>
> That isn't my point. taibei, as a lojbanized name, isn't how its
> pronounced locally or in English.

That would apparently be a disagreement between you and whichever author
wrote that example.

Assuming that this is the Chinese name, we did adopt some standardized
rules for Lojbanization of phoneme sets in consultation with a couple of
native speakers.  You may have a legitimate disagreement with whatever
was decided then, and it could be that an example using phonemes where
there is some disagreement on how to transcribe them is not the best
example for a beginner text.

> If there intention was to teach that lesson, important as it is, they
> should have used a proper example.

Perhaps.  But they used the example that they did.

>      > Some other recommendations:
>      >
>      > 1) Try not to emphasize the concept of malglico so much.
>
>     Absolutely, one should do so.  Lojban is NOT encoded English, and if
>     one
>     gets lazy, one will not be understood  (or will be intentionally
>     misunderstood by some people who are literal-minded and don't like
>     malglico).
>
> I don't remember stating that Lojban was encoded English, or even
> implying it.

That is the usual implication when one complains about the emphasis on
malglico, and the emphasis on malglico is specifically to counter the
tendency for (especially new) native-English Lojbanists to encode their
English phrasings based on Lojban keywords.

> But the seeming emphasis on malglico can come across as insulting,
> especially with gotchas like ninmu.

Anyone learning a language needs to have a thicker skin than that.

Malglico usages ARE a serious problem for beginners, and it needs to be
repeatedly emphasized.  If one is insulted by the reminders, then
perhaps one is too easily insulted.  There is no one who has spoken
Lojban longer than Nora and myself, and yet we still sometimes screw up
on this problem.

>      > 3) Concepts and words related to language studies are confusing,
>     please
>      > give some kind of definition for these concepts.
>
>     Technical terminology will often be opaque to someone not trained in
>     the
>     relevant field.  I was confused about grammar terms for years including
>     the first couple of years AFTER I started separating Lojban from TLI
>     Loglan.  And even worse, sometimes technical terms have different
>     meanings in colloquial English (e.g. the classic misuse of "theory" by
>     creationists).  The latter is why I went to using the Lojban words
>     untranslated.  There really is no English translation of tanru that
>     does
>     the concept justice.
>
>
> I'm not talking about gismu, and tanru, and jbo'ivla. I'm talking about
> meta-linguistic terms.
> Words /about/ language that are thrown around that beginners are not
> likely to understand.

Those include "gismu" and "tanru", etc.  Maybe YOU understand them, but
I've dealt with many a beginner who did not.  But they did a lot better
when we used the Lojban word, then when we used the English-equivalent
jargon.


Well while translating "Wave lessons"  (http://www.lojban.org/tiki/wavelessonscontinued) to Russian we've got numerous (ba'uru'e) complaints that lojbanic words are hard to understand. Therefore we made the following replacements in the translation:
sumka'i/pro-sumti > pronoun
sumtcita > preposition
jufra > utterance

and several others. However,
1. when first introducing one of those terms the lojbanic name is presented in brackets. Sometimes it is introduced later. So it's just a tool for slowly making students get used to lojbanic terms.
2. "gismu, brivla, sumti, tanru" are not translated because there are no corresponding terms in Europeans languages.

As for L4B in the wiki im not reformatting it atm (as im a bit busy with solving problems with Waves). If any of you can help me with reformatting it do not hesitate to start it now. Note that editing the text is currently out of the question. Let's work now on the original L4B 1.0 only.


Now maybe you are talking about some other English jargon words that
have not been given Lojban words.  But you do not identify the words
that bothered you, so I had to make a guess.

lojbab

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.