Re: serving the needs of Lojban learners

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

la xoses. cusku di'e:
>- Being an isolated learner. This inevitably leads to long term progress
>stops since it's sometimes very boring to work alone, specially while
>learning languages.

I'm isolated, too.  Up until Logfest this summer, my only contact with other
lojbanists was on this list and via email.  I found that people were very
tolerant and interested in beginning attempts at lojban writing.  But not
having anyone locally was/is a problem.

>I am now reading the refgrammar materials, which is being even harder because
>they are very concentrated, more consulting than teaching material, I think.

I didn't use the textbook much.  I started with the diagrammed summary, then
eventually read the refgrammar papers.  I read all of them the first time
through, not with the intent of learning much but out of curiosity for how
the language worked, and I didn't bother remembering lots of stuff.  Having
read those gave me a good overview so I could go back and look stuff up when
I needed it.

Then as I started trying to use the language I got frustrated with how hard
it was to look up things I vaguely remembered from the refgrammar, so I made
myself a grammar "cheat sheet" that summarizes everything in tables and
charts in about 10 pages.  It's extremely worn and tattered and sits next to
my computer most of the time, along with some printed out gismu and rafsi lists.

>Finally, sorry for this too long and out-of-the-subject posting.

This isn't out-of-the-subject!  It may be a problem that people think of the
mailing list as if it were a small room in which everyone participates in
the same conversation.  If you stick your own subject line on top you can
talk about anything at all, and it won't be off topic -- people who aren't
interested will skip it.

I would suggest that people who want to see more beginning-level text and
discussion here, start their own subject, and put EASY LOJBAN TEXT or
something on the subject line.  Then people who respond ought to restrict
themselves to the less-bizarre aspects of lojban -- i.e. avoid mex,
termsets, jai bau, stuff like that.

Actually if we were really ambitious we could come up with some more
strictly defined subsets of Lojban and different conversations could limit
themselves to a particular level to keep things accessible to everyone;
furthermore we could use the subsets as a basis for graded texts and even
have the future textbook adhere to their ordering.  Something like this for
example:

Level I Lojban - "Basic Lojban"
  Uses only the first 400 gismu (in the Logflash file order)
  tanru
  a certain list of well-accepted lujvo, plus -mau, -rai...
  mi, do, ko'a, mi'o ma'a do'o
  le, la, lo, cu, nu, ka, ni, du'u
  pu, ba, ca, vi va vu, zi za zu
  .e, .a, .o, .u, .anai, joi
  .ui, .oi
  coi, doi, co'o, mi'e
Level II Lojban - "Street Lojban"
  The first 800 gismu
  Lujvo made from 4/5 letter rafsi
  50 or 100 very common 3-letter rafsi
  A few more attitudinals
  all logical and non-logical connectives
  relative clauses and phrases
  da
  evidentials
Level III Lojban - "Standard Lojban"
  All gismu, lujvo and rafsi
  entire tense system
  bo, sei
  All attitudinals
  zo'u
Level IV Lojban - "Academic Lojban"
  termsets
  MEX
  letteral shifts
  ...?
                     ____
 Chris Bogart        \  /  http://www.quetzal.com
 Boulder, CO          \/   cbogart@quetzal.com