Getting started with lojban

[איתי שרון‎]

Hello, I would like to learn lojban but I don't know how to start.

Any ideas / tips?

Thanks,

Itay

[guskant]

First try one of the following four materials.

1. la karda

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/la_karda

I recommend it for all beginners. It contains basic ideas of Lojban, and it is not too long.

2. hajiloji

http://cogas.github.io/hajiloji/

If you speak Japanese, you will find there the best-of-the-world texbook written by Cogas with many corrections by Sosobotpi.

3. ko lojbo iu

http://guskant.github.io/kolojbo.iu/

I also created a beginners' audio course with text in Japanese, though I would like to revise it to a better version in near future.

4. private lessons by Selpa'i (he might have changed his own name to Solpa'i)

https://www.reddit.com/r/lojban/comments/1v6v0h/learn_lojban_with_selpai_private_lessons/

Try it if you are rich. The teacher is the best-of-the-world Lojban speaker.

After finishing one of them, you can try reading/listening of materials in Lojban:

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/te_gerna_la_lojban

The materials may contain errors in Lojban, or dialects of Lojban.

You can check for grammatical structure with some parsers:

http://lojban.github.io/ilmentufa/camxes.html

As for some dialects, I prepared variations of parsers:

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/zantufa/en#Classes_of_Zantufa

You can check for the definition of words by dictionaries:

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojbanic_Software#Dictionaries

You can also try writing/speaking in Lojban. You don't need to obey the ways of expression of senior Lojbanists. They are more or less culturally biased, and you can create your own expressions as long as it is parsed and not much far from definition of words.

It you want to create a new word, add it to {jbovlaste}, the source of all the dictionaries above:

http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/

In reading/listening/writing/speaking in Lojban, you'd better sometimes check for the original concepts of Lojban in 

[

"The Complete Lojban Language" 

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/The_Complete_Lojban_Language

or

the online version "The Lojban Reference Grammar"

http://lojban.github.io/cll/

]

plus "BPFK Sections".

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/BPFK_Sections

You may find other textbooks, but I have some reasons I don't recommend them as follows.

5. Lojban for Beginners

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban_For_Beginners,_The_Book

or the archived html version

http://web.archive.org/web/20150118224452/http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/book1.html

I first tried it but I did not understand well. Maybe it is aimed at English-speaking readers, while I don't speak English very well. You may try it, but you need to pay attention to the outdated explanation of articles ({gadri} in lojban), which I explained there:

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/gadri:_an_unofficial_commentary_from_a_logical_point_of_view

6. Lojban Wave Lessons

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban_Wave_Lessons

It is recommended by some people, to which I don't belong. It used to contain explanations with misunderstanding in Logic, but some of them are already fixed. The main reason for I don't recommend it is that it includes culturally biased experimental part of speech ({selma'o} in Lojban). You will find the explanation at 3 minutes 36 seconds of my recent documentary video (You will see the English subtitles by clicking on the CC button there):

https://vimeo.com/190637628

Only because of that point, I regard the text as aiming at only geeks who freely use such {selma'o} lacking philosophy. Besides, the text is too long for a textbook to be finished. If you have such a time to read that long text, you'd better strive for the Complete Lojban Language.

7. The Crash Course (a draft)

https://mw.lojban.org/papri/The_Crash_Course_(a_draft)

It is the worst course I've ever seen. The contents are much biased to the writer's original values. It used to contain many dialects that are not generally agreed, but the grammatical dialects of them were already removed after the writer misunderstood my complaint.

# I said to the writer "Don't pretend to be official! Teach them on your own website, or obey BPFK!" with meaning of "exclusive or" ({jo nai} in Lojban), but he ignored this basic Logic, and misunderstood as if I said "obey BPFK" only. 

Any way, it still contains semantic dialects that are not generally agreed. You will find the explanation at 25 minutes 17 seconds of the documentary video above about one of the semantic dialects taught in the Crash Course without mentioning "it's a dialect". 

mu'o

[gleki.is...@gmail.com]

Try these: https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Learn_Lojban:_new_methods