Re: [lojban-beginners] Is Lojban actually learnable?

120 views
Skip to first unread message

uakci

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 3:58:24 AM8/22/16
to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com

Obviously, yes. Since, at it's core, it's a language, one can gain fluency in it. There already are several Lojbanists who are fluent (and thus grasp the whole sentence at once, think in Lojban and not their native language, etc.).

— mi'e zukte be lo ka jungau mu'o —


On Aug 21, 2016 4:43 PM, "Collin Damskov" <collin....@gmail.com> wrote:
I know the language can be learned, but I am wondering if it can be grasped in the same way as other languages?  Is it actually possible to gain a level of fluency in it that you barely have to think about what is going on when you use it?  It is fundamentally different from other languages, so I wonder if this could be learned in the same way as other languages.

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

Niles Rogoff

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 5:43:49 AM8/22/16
to Lojban Beginners
Yeah but you have to study it for like three years, is what I've heard.

uakci

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 5:45:16 AM8/22/16
to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com

Nah, I'm doing it for 1 year and I feel very close to fluency. *sei tolcumla*

— mi'e la uakci mu'o re'i —


--

gleki.is...@gmail.com

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 3:22:14 PM8/22/16
to Lojban Beginners


Em segunda-feira, 22 de agosto de 2016 12:45:16 UTC+3, la uakci escreveu:

Nah, I'm doing it for 1 year and I feel very close to fluency. *sei tolcumla*


Nope. la uakci learnt it in just 4 months to kinda fluency (vague term but who asks for standardized test?). Proved by logs.
 

— mi'e la uakci mu'o re'i —

On Aug 22, 2016 11:43 AM, "Niles Rogoff" <niles...@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah but you have to study it for like three years, is what I've heard.

El domingo, 21 de agosto de 2016, 10:43:04 (UTC-4), Collin Damskov escribió:
I know the language can be learned, but I am wondering if it can be grasped in the same way as other languages?  Is it actually possible to gain a level of fluency in it that you barely have to think about what is going on when you use it?  It is fundamentally different from other languages, so I wonder if this could be learned in the same way as other languages.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban-beginne...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com.

Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 4:25:33 PM8/22/16
to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com
On 8/22/2016 1:27 PM, gleki.is...@gmail.com wrote:
> Em segunda-feira, 22 de agosto de 2016 12:45:16 UTC+3, la uakci escreveu:
>
> Nah, I'm doing it for 1 year and I feel very close to fluency. *sei
> tolcumla*
>
>
> Nope. la uakci learnt it in just 4 months to kinda fluency (vague term
> but who asks for standardized test?). Proved by logs.

Nick Nicolas in 1991 spent only a weekend reading everything we had then
(long before CLL was written), and was writing better translations than
anyone else up to that point almost immediately. He wasn't yet
"fluent", but I suspect that many of his translations still stand up 25
years later (at least if one corrects for the rafsi changes, since most
of those translations predate the rafsi reassignment and other
baselining efforts in the 1992-1994 timeframe.

Nick had considerable experience in learning languages, which certainly
made a difference. But the bottom line is that young kids learn
languages almost automatically; adults have to work at it. But if you
do work at it, and are willing to accept a period of making lots of
mistakes and learning from them, pretty much anyone can gain competency.

(I myself am NOT a good language learner, and will probably never speak
Lojban fluently - I'm past 60 years old - but I still was able to muddle
through a conversation and could translate a text with word lookup
capability handy (but when I was actively conversing, I generally did
NOT stop to look up gismu - I made mistakes and learned from people
failing to understand me.)

lojbab

uakci

unread,
Aug 22, 2016, 8:36:23 PM8/22/16
to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com

On Aug 22, 2016 10:25 PM, "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:
>
> On 8/22/2016 1:27 PM, gleki.is...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Em segunda-feira, 22 de agosto de 2016 12:45:16 UTC+3, la uakci escreveu:
>>
>>     Nah, I'm doing it for 1 year and I feel very close to fluency. *sei
>>     tolcumla*
>>
>>
>> Nope. la uakci learnt it in just 4 months to kinda fluency (vague term
>> but who asks for standardized test?). Proved by logs.

za'a bu'o .u'e se'i
I remember reading through L4B in August '15; now I'm reading through December's logs and I have to say I can't disagree. Thanks, Gleki for pointing this out.

>
>
> Nick Nicolas in 1991 spent only a weekend reading everything we had then (long before CLL was written), and was writing better translations than anyone else up to that point almost immediately.  He wasn't yet "fluent", but I suspect that many of his translations still stand up 25 years later (at least if one corrects for the rafsi changes, since most of those translations predate the rafsi reassignment and other baselining efforts in the 1992-1994 timeframe.

Hmm, interesting. No doubt that a person like him can grasp the concepts of Lojban immediately (well, almost). Congrats to him anyway.

>
> Nick had considerable experience in learning languages, which certainly made a difference.  But the bottom line is that young kids learn languages almost automatically; adults have to work at it. 

Does that mean I didn't work while learning? *sei za'ei nitpike*

> But if you do work at it, and are willing to accept a period of making lots of mistakes and learning from them, pretty much anyone can gain competency.

I think that many stop learning because they feel helplessness towards solving their errors which, to them, seem to pop up in every sentence. Yes, one has to be patient and willing to go through. (I remembered myself being in a bad mood because of feeling totally horrible at Lojban...)

> (I myself am NOT a good language learner, and will probably never speak Lojban fluently - I'm past 60 years old - but I still was able to muddle through a conversation and could translate a text with word lookup capability handy (but when I was actively conversing, I generally did NOT stop to look up gismu - I made mistakes and learned from people failing to understand me.)
>
> lojbab

~ mi'e zi'o

suke...@gmail.com

unread,
Jul 13, 2017, 7:40:32 PM7/13/17
to Lojban Beginners
coi

Maybe the main concern is actually "How to spread out the language so that I have many people to speak/learn/make errors with?"...
I don't have stats on Lojban usage, but it seems rather a niche (correct me if I'm wrong). And maybe this is what you feel when you ask if language is learnable.
I feel like the small dispersion is the main drawback of the language, unfortunately. Lojban is obviously worth more Lojbanists! ;)

co'o

MorphemeAddict

unread,
Jul 14, 2017, 11:04:48 AM7/14/17
to lojban-b...@googlegroups.com
Kids don't learn languages almost effortlessly (automatically, yes, but that's not really the point). They spend all their waking hours learning language, working at it very hard. It just looks effortless because they're so good at. 

stevo

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages