History: Level 0 Booklet Errata Chapter 1

Source of version: 2 (current)

!Chapter 1 Errata !!!Completed **An English-based phonetic writing system (e.g. "/LOZH-bahn/") is used sporadically throughout the text, without being explained until the phonology part of Chapter 2. Perhaps a cross-reference from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2. The phonetic writing could also be replaced by IPA, but this would be more difficult to understand for the layman who is not fluent in English. *** I will insert such a note, but it will contain the proviso "if you are reading this inside the Level 0 package", because the brochure chapter is still intended to have an independent existence. No IPA here: it'll scare the mundanes off. **The word ''metaphor'' is used throughout to refer to ''tanru'', and only sometimes are they called ''tanru metaphor'' or something similar. There should be an explanation that the word ''metaphor'' refers to ''tanru'' and not to the standard meaning of the English word ''metaphor'' (and perhaps a better explanation of what ''tanru'' are.) --((Adam)) *** Quaint Lojbabism; it is potentially quite confusing, so I refer to it throughout as ''tanru'' metaphor. ** Question 1 *** "led since 1987 by The Logical Language Group." -- that link doesn't work. -- Robin **** Snarl. I shouldn't have to be the one debugging DocBook stylesheets. I have made a workaround, and it works now. **** <blink> What did I say? I'm sure that made sense to you, and I'm going to guess you aren't actually angry at *me*, but *I* have no idea what you're talking about. **** No, angry at !DocBook stylesheets: cross-refs don't work to question/answer pairs, so I made a cross-ref to an index entry instead. Don't mind me... (But it works OK now.) **** 'k. -Robin **Speaking of which, what's with the "la 2001nan." thing anyways? Especially since 'nan' is rafsi for 'south'. 8) What's wrong with "le 2001moi nanca" or "le 2001 momna'a" or something? -- Robin ***Having seen from the havoc of ((Dates)) that my big-endian solution to too controversial to appear in print *sigh*, I'm using le 2001moi nanca, with le 2001moi as a second mention abbreviation. *** Actually, having read ((Dates)), I think your 4 digit year thing rocks and you should go with it. -Robin **** Now made ''la nnnn-moi'' throughout. **Question 5: ***Replace "capitalization is rarely used to indicate unusual stress in the pronunciation of names" with "capitalization is used rarely, and only to indicate ...". The wording suggests that there are more common ways than capitalization to indicate unusual stress in the pronunciation of names. ***Occam's razor: ''roda poi velcki cu so'eroi ganai saprai gi xagrai'' -- If you want to put the tense directly in front of the gek-sentence like this, it needs to be followed by ''ke'': ''so'eroi ke ganai saprai gi xagrai'' (Don't ask me why.) -- Adam **** I hate Lojban syntax. ***The only thing I'd take issue with (which I think I've mentioned before) is the idea that Lojban is more verbose than English because of the lack of unmarked metaphor / idiom. I think this is compensated for by attitudinals and the fact that a lot of grammatical features are optional (tense, aspect etc.). -- robin.tr ****Changed to: Because there are no idioms to shorten expressions, a Lojban text can be longer than the corresponding colloquial English text. The unambiguous linguistic structures that result are a major benefit that makes this worthwhile; and Lojban has constructions of its own that are rather more succint than their equivalents in English (such as logic-specific formulations, and expressions of attitude.) Moreover, much of the disambiguating machinery of Lojban is optional; you need use them only when you <emphasis>need</emphasis> to use them. **Question 6: ***Spelling error: replace all occurences of "cuska" with "cukta". *** "(quite how you can have a relationship of one argument is one of the mysteries of predicate logic!)" -- I'd be inclined to remove this to be nice to the newbs, but if you're going to leave it in, please remove the word 'quite'; I think that's an Austrailianism. -- Robin ****Anglicism, actually (this is Robin.tr's). I think it's needlessly distracting here, and agree to excise it. **Question 7: ***Possibly extraneous punctuation: why the question mark in "... to what is said (is it hearsay, direct observation, logical deduction, etc.?)"? ****Not necessarily extraneous, but not staying, either. :-) "whether it is" ***(Difficult-to-fix issues) "and one can talk of being "enough-th in line" for tickets to a sellout movie" Now wait a minute. Is there any other ways in Lojban to number the places in a line than to call the foremost number 1? In that case, one would want to have a *small enough* number in line, instead of *large enough*, as I think "raumoi" must mean. ****Interesting issue! I think rau should be able to mean "few enough" in contexts where fewer is more significant. I can't think of a case where this would cause problems. --xorxes ****I agree with Jorge, and note that this must have been Lojbab's intent for ''rau'' all along. Taken to mailing list. *** "which are similar to such ejaculations in English" -- *Must* you use the word ejaculation? 8) -Robin **** No I mustn't :-) . Interjections. **Question 8 *** "Such exceptions are the bane of learning to speak natural language" -- learning to speak *a* natural language. -Robin *** "It is only slightly more complex in its grammar than the current generation of computer languages (such as Ada and Perl)." -- Ada is in no way current, AFAIK. -Robin **** True. This has come up before, but i can't find it on the mailing list: would it be kosher to say C++ and Perl? Comparing it to Perl is actually quite scary -- but probably accurate. **** Bah, couldn't wait; made it C++. *** "A working vocabulary including the complete set of 1350 root words takes about 8.12 weeks of study at 1 hour per day." -- Bullshit. -Robin **** I'm inclined to agree --- quite simply noone learns Lojban like that; but rather than rewrite it myself, I'm taking it to the list for comment. **** The success stories were that ball-park, but I would prefer a toning down; I'm prefixing it with "Using flash-card techniques" ** Question 9 *** "This is true even if the words are unfamiliar, so long as the spelling and grammar rules are known." -- And the words are all pronounced correctly, and no-one does a mental transposition (nelci/nilce; nukni/nakni; kalci/kelci). OK, so you probably shouldn't point out that last part, but it annoys me. 8) -Robin **** This is a propaganda document --- not a place to air our dirty laundry. :-) *** "or can be left as vague as the speaker desires (as is usually the case)." -- "or can be left vague, as the speaker desires". Otherwise, the "as is usually the case" is referring to the usualness of the amount of vagueness, which is never specified. -Robin **** can be left vague, as the speaker typically desires. **** Ooh, good choice. -Robin *** 4th paragraph: s/metaphorsare/metaphors are/ ** Question 10 *** Heh heh. As an example, "klama sutra" == "one who comes quickly". Technically trilingual (English, Hindi and lojban). -Robin **** A pun I want to see advertised widely and broadly, because it's damn cool. But not in this document. :-) **** Heh heh. Glad you like it. 8) -Robin *** I would prefer "tanru" to "tanru metaphor", or, at the very least "tanru metaphor__s__". -((tsali)) ** Question 11 *** "it has proven attractive to Esperantists interested in acquiring a new perspective on their own international language, and feel less threatened because Lojban has different goals." -- s/and feel/who feel/ -Robin ** Question 13 *** "Not since the Middle Ages have poets had such an opportunity to affect the development of a new language, as they now can with Lojban." -- I'd remove the comma. -Robin **** You know, this claim is just bollocks anyway. Many cultures have developed literary registers since the Middle Ages. And I don't just mean Esperanto: try Estonian, say, or Hebrew, or Indonesian. It's not been done primarily by the poets --- but then again, I don't believe it has been in Lojban either. Rephrased: Rarely do poets... (and the comma goes.) **Question 14: ***Replace "the grammar and vocabulary has already been baselined (frozen) for several years" with "the grammar and core vocabulary has already been baselined (frozen)" for several years. Lujvo, for instance, are still being developed. ** Question 15 *** "that there is a Lojban-language.only discussion group" -- the dashes there are of two subtly different types; it looks bad, IMO. -Robin **** I am a typography pedant, and the subtly different dashes are in fact the correct way of indicating structure in hyphenated compounds: ((Lojban Language) only). Stays, unless I am overwhelmingly shouted down. ** Question 16 *** "Learning any language other than your native tongue broadens your perspectives and allows you to transcend the necessarily limited viewpoints of your native language culture." -- "native language's culture" -Robin **Question 17: *** Re: Logflash. There is also a Unix version available. ****And a Mac version. Antiquated though it now is. *** "The Logical Language Group maintains lists of Lojban students of various degrees of skill and activity levels." -- We do? Where? Damn good idea, though. -Robin **** Just asked the board whether we should be saying this officially. *** "There are also both a general and an in-Lojban discussion group" -- "There is", I think. -Robin *** "Information will be found below." -- You should say where below (i.e. in what answer #). -Robin **** "end of document" *** "For more advanced study, you may wish to use the draft lessons written in the late 1980s (22 lessons); these draft lessons will eventually form the basis of a Lojban textbook." -- Shouldn't you be mentioning your lessons here instead? -Robin **** Done: "For more advanced study, you may wish to use <citetitle>Lojban for Beginners</citetitle>, an introductory set of lessons by Robin Turner and Nick Nicholas." **** Woohoo. **** I'm asking Board whether it still wants Bob's lessons mentioned; my opinion is, they shouldn't be, until they're updated to the current language. ... I think I have Bob's acquiescence on this. *** "The Logical Language Group will assist you in finding other Lojban students of comparable skill level and interests, either in your local area or reachable by post or electronic mail." -- Umm, I have had lojbab promise to tell me about people in the Bay area at least 3 times now. This statement appears to be completely innaccurate in practice. -Robin **** The question remains, should it remain in place 'in theory', given that this is a document for the ages? I'd say yes. **** ,,, Bob's response means this stays; it's something that should be happening, and putting it in print like this is as good a way as any to force it to happen. *** "If you are reading this brochure on-line, or have access to the Internet, the complete What is Lojban? booklet is also available on the World Wide Web for free at the address: [http://www.lojban.org/level0.html"] -- This is patently wrong, as I am certain you aware. Do you want me to put it on the main site at some point? -Robin **** At ''some'' point. Which is coming soon, since the package is about to be made official, right? So tell me where you think it should go, and I'll change it accordingly. ** Question 18 *** "We can accept bank cheques in most currencies and international payment via Master Card and Visa." -- And !PayPal. -Robin *** "A printed newsletter (le lojbo karni) and a journal (ju'i lobypli) have been published intermittently, and may or may not be in active publication when you read this. " -- Very slick. 8) -Robin **** Embarrassing to have in print. If the board recommits to publishing these, I may end up taking out the proviso. **** I'd rather it was left in, myself. My comment was not sarcastic. -Robin **** Understood. But if JL/LK are up and running, and look like staying so, the phrase is obsolete (and embarrassing.) I assume revising that sentence down the road is no problem, since this stays POD. -- n **** Yeah, should be fine. -Robin *** "The Logical Language Group, Inc. is prohibited by its bylaws from spending more than 15% of its expenses for administrative purposes, except by special agreement with a donor who agrees to cover such added costs in full." -- Really? That's asinine, IMO. -Robin **** *shrug* I assume that them's the by-laws. It might be worth it to reconfigure them, but not right now... **Question 19. *** "If you are attempting to learn the language, we provide as much help as we can to assist you." -- s/we provide/we will provide/ -Robin *** "We conduct an annual (northern summer) celebration of the language and community, called 'Logfest', in conjunction with our annual business meeting in the Washington DC area." -- I'd remove that "(northern summer)" thing and say that it's generally in July or August somewhere. -Robin *** "We distribute informational material, including these brochures." s/these brochures/this tome/ zo'o -Robin **** *sheesh* :-) These booklets. *** "Use Lojban: Lojban will not really achieve the status of 'language' until people use it." s/:/!/ -Robin **** Eh... the : is kinda out of my control; is !: acceptable? **** Well, I don't see how it's out of your control, but sure. -Robin **** Again, partly !DocBook stylesheet constraints, partly lack of imagination on my part. -- n *** " [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban,] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jbosnu, [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban-beginners"] -- Actually, the beginners list is only available off of lobjan.org now. [http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/] -Robin