View source for hacking Lojban studies

Attitudinals can be a problem when studying Lojban. Since they are similar in form and short this table might help you to memorize them:
<tab class="wikitable" head=top,left>
&nbsp;	a	e	i	o	u
a			belief		discovery
e			agreement		surprise
i	intent	obligation	fear	complaint/pain	happiness
o			respect		completion
u	desire		love		pity
'a	attentive	permission	acceptance	pride	gain
'e	alertness	competence	approval	closeness	wonder
'i	effort	constraint	togetherness	caution	amusement
'o	hope	request	appreciation	patience	courage
'u	interest	suggestion	familiarity	relaxation	repentance
</tab>

With this table you might easier remember interjections. You know that the word in the third column, second row must be '''ie''', and remembering where ''agreement'' is will probably be easier than remembering abstract letters. You could group the cells of the table to help add more structure. For example, ''permission'', ''acceptance'', and ''pride'' seem to go together, so I might draw a box around them or color them the same color. That would also help me remember ''approval'', since it's right next to the box, which is distinctive. There are a lot of blanks on the top half of the table, so the words are naturally grouped, which should make it really easy to learn. The more structure you can add, without getting so complicated you'd have to learn the structure too, the better. That's why it's divided into vowel words and words with an '.

The way I'd study the table would be to make standard set of flash cards with the lojban word on one side and the definition on the other, and a set going the reverse direction as well. And then when studying them, I'd be sure to picture the table in my mind whenever I did a card. If you wanted, you could actually put the whole table on your cards and do a fill-in the blank system, but be wary of relying on process-of-elimination when you answer the cards. For the position to definition cards, it would be good to have no definitions shown. (For the others, having context on the answer card would be good). It seems like a lot of work to make a deck like that but it would probably be useful to others, so there's that.

This is still a lot to learn, so you want to take it in chunks. Just add cards for the first line or two to begin with, and study only those until you feel confident and Anki only gives you a few cards a day from that deck to study. Then add a few more. At least that's the way I find works best for me. A constant trickle of new cards is harder than a couple days of new cards, then a week or two getting comfortable with them, then introducing new cards again. I like to do six cards a day per deck, and perhaps 20 new cards at a time, across all my decks.

Memorization is still memorization, but when you engage your spatial memory like this seemingly random information can be much easier to digest. A smarter arrangement than mine could help even more, but there's no sense in putting off learning it until you've got the perfect structure figured out.

Using the tables as a mental map is why many are able to learn as much as they have. Another thing that can help is relating Lojban sounds to the meaning, since often sounds often remind us of the meaning.

Use examples. "Initiative, perfective" would be too difficult to use in real life and apply on the fly or to make an effective flash card. Also a picture showing a word and its illustration will work.
[[Category:tadni]]