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GENERAL: Tuesday night in 3 languages



Well. Tuesday night Lojban conversation sessions have continued in spite of
two rambunctious kids who cannot tell English from Lojban, and probably don't
much care.  I will honestly admit that it is much harder to do conversations,
what with a lot of distractions (kids climbing in laps, yelling and screaming
-until I give up and say"zoi .rus. [appropriate Russian imperative] .rus."),
and Nora and my having to constantly shoft language gears.  (She gets home
about an hour before people arrive for Lojban conversation, has to switch to
Russian for that hour, since some 90% of the language use in this household is
in that language -note that she has somewhat less than the equivalent of a
semester course in Russian, so this isn;t easy for her.  Then we both have
to switch to Lojban for the 1-2 hours of our get-togethers, with any needed
explanations in English.  Since we are using a mentoring approach in bringing
less experienced speakers up to Lojban speed, such explanations are frequent.
But as I noted, we also have to keep jumping back to Russian, and the kids
generally go to sleep right in the middle of the session, making for an extra
bit of Russian.

)

My what a mess.  I'm sure that people will forgive Nora and I for our occassion

al slips of the tongue, when "ya" replaces "mi", and all matter of other tri-
lingual confusions enter our language use.  I have indeed accidentally used all
3 languages in a single sentence a few times (and intentionally many more times
- it is becoming a standing joke here).

The kids don;t understand Lojban yet, but then it is not exactly our priority.
(Actually, Angela actually seemed to respond to "xu do jimpe", probably being
cued by tone of voice of body language - she shook her head "no".  Avgust
tried to say "jubme" when I said "ta jubme" and indicated he should try to
echo.  His speech isn't too clear in any language, and the result would
certainly not pass the computer recognition test, but maybe some day...  At l
least he now pronounces Lojban fairly well (adds an 'a' on the end sometimes).)

Best line of the night - Sylvia spotted Avgust poking his head around his
bedroom door, and said "Avgust. pikabu", which prompted Nora and then me
to query her on this new and unusual numerical variable (pi is the decimal
point, and "kabu" is a lerfu - a letteral symbol in some way associated with
the property abstract word 'ka').  I somehow doubt that Avgust is quite ready
for abstract mathematical discussions yet, even if he does seem to be quite
bright.

No Lojban work being done yet, though I am getting a couple of hours a day
to do things other than child-rearing already.  I suspect it will take till
one or both of the kids are in school, still a week or two away, before I
get significant Lojban time other than mailreading.  Things are improving,
though.

lojbab