Re: McGuffey Readers now available in Tatari Faran!

Taking time out to reply to this...

----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>


> On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 12:26:25PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
>> San tse!
>
> san tse. :-)
>
>
>> Tatari sa nari!
>
> Hmm, I'm not sure I understand what you intended to refer to.
I need to understand a little better how complements work.  I was attempting
to say that Tatari, your "language," is "funny" as in pleasing, fun.  But
clearly I didn't get there! :)

>> Tse sa nari ei. :)
>
> Interesting use of a complement as a verb. ;-) I get the gist, though.
> :-)
Again, I need to look at this more closely.  Which is why I was nagging you
about repetition! :)  Basically, I think you're a scream.

> OK OK, I realize from what you wrote below that my current
> presentation style for Tatari Faran isn't quite working. So this is no
> fault of yours. If it's any comfort at all, your TF greeting is
> impeccable. :-)
Well, I just copied that, after all!!  It's right up front. (You ARE a
scream).

 I've been meaning to write an introductory tutorial
> that will be much more useful to the prospective learner of Tatari
> Faran than the grammar. The grammar, after all, is the definitive
> description of the language, and as such, it's rather difficult to
> arrange it so as to be easy for the prospective learner to understand
> at first read.
It just needs tables and repetitions, and lots of examples with
translations... you know, the kind of stuff that's real time-consuming, but
is in aid of dummies like me.  Tatari Faran for Dummies.

> I faced the same difficulty the first time I participated in the relay
> with Ebisédian: I attached a bunch of more-or-less arbitrarily
> organized grammar notes (well, it seemed a logical sequence to me, but
> in retrospect it was quite arbitrary), and expected the recipient to
> be able to piece the puzzle together.
Aaaach!

Well, the results were ...
> rather interesting, as the participants can testify. ;-)
:)

>> >The Editors regret to announce that due to technical inadeq^H^H^H^H
>> >difficulties, no audio samples of Tatari Faran are available yet.
>>
>> Aillyyy! :(
>
> Yes, I know yall's expectations were all up recently, what with
> Arthaey recording Asha'ille (which is really quite pretty) and all
> that. Maybe I should invest in a microphone so that I can, uh, cope
> with the changing standards of the modern world. ;-)
I know the feeling.  I've got the microphone, but need to download Audacity.
And learn Cakewalk.

>
>> ------------------------------
>> Vyko... I love the fact you got this up.  It's a GREAT start!  It took
>> wild
>> horses, though, to drag a compliment in TF out of me--corrections
>> welcome!--since it's so hard to cobble something together.
>
> For a moment, I thought you said "complement", and wondered if there
> was somehow a glaring hole in my explanation of TF complements which
> I'm unaware of. :-)
Right... I should beware complimenting people in their own invented
languages.

>
>> What I think your pages need, and it will take time, is constant
>> reinforcement of information...which might require more web space, which
>> is
>> a pain.
>
> In my case, though, additional webspace isn't really a problem. The TF
> pages are served from a colocated webserver which I administer, and I
> have a total of 2GB of space to squand^H^H^H^H^H^Hmake use of.
I'm jealous.  How can I get a colocated webserver? :)

> I think it would greatly help if I wrote an Introduction to Tatari
> Faran which is geared towards teaching the language to L2 learners,
> :-P rather than expect people to digest the grammar without any aids.
> This has been on my TODO list for a while now; I guess I just needed a
> little push to get going on it. :-)
Nisimol!  ("push")

>> And trying to write in it!  (Something I'm sure you'd like your
>> colleagues to attempt!)  As it stands, you don't have any
>> illustration of possessive pronouns that I could find, although
>> something could be cobbled together from the genitive and the
>> regular pronouns; but how does the genitive ending mesh with the
>> case affixes?
>
> Hmm. I think I made the cardinal mistake of assuming that the reader
> would know how to put the pieces together. Probably another reason I
> need to write an introductory tutorial.
Knowing how to teach something you know intimately is a rare skill;
second-guessing the average Dummie is difficult to do.  It's easier to
brilliantly create, oddly enough. :)  I think that if I just printed all
your pages out and spread them out on the floor in front of me, I could
*get* it; it was my efforts to produce something on the cuff, and in such
short a time, that made me fail.  That's why a RELAY would be good for me
and Tatari Faran.  Even so, it's easier to translate than compose in a
foreign language, don't you agree?

>> Couldn't find "your" at all;
>
> That is odd. I just tried searching for "your" and it turned up the
> entry for _tsen_ correctly. Did you by any chance tick the checkbox
> that says "exclude pseudo-entries"?
Nope.  I'll try it again.  Maybe put instructions at the top of the page?

>> I figured out that to find "see" or "and" (and not get every
>> instance in which you use these words in your English directions)
>> that I needed to specify the word's part of speech.  Didn't work in
>> every case.  I'm sure that it will improve as you add to it.
>
> Yes, this is a symptom of my lexicon source not being adequately
> marked so that the script could tell between words that belong to the
> definition and words that belong to lexicon structure ("see also" and
> the like). I guess it's time to fix this, even if it entails the
> daunting prospect of revising all 776 entries.
>
>
>> I LOVE your Tatari Faran, Teoh; it is so original!.
>
> teirias pipi.
I'll hazard a guess. :)

>> But you make it so difficult to learn, primarily because you don't
>> give enough repetitive information.  Repetition is GOD in
>> conteaching.  ;-)  Actually in all natlang teaching.  Maggelity
>> aside.
> [...]
>
> Yes I know... like I said, the grammar was intended to be a definitive
> description rather than a learner's guide.
Right... I know.  You don't even have to turn it into a "teach yourself
Tatari Faran."

 I will start working on the
> latter now! :-)
>
>> (Whose own pages are terribly omissive as well...so I'm one to talk)
>
> Speaking of which, are the remaining lessons in the Teach Yourself
> Teonaht page up yet?
Nooooooo... :(

I was all hooked and eager after reading the
> first (few?) page(s), but was rather disappointed to find that the
> remainder of the tutorial was not available yet.
Well, as someone else said, it is very difficult to write a Teach Yourself.
What components in your language are to come first, especially when
everything depends on everything else?  It's like trying to find the
beginning of a circle.  I was trying to be very clever with the Teach
Yourself... the pictures, the little story, the intrigue... J.A.J. was going
to enter this city and we'd find out about Teonaht culture as well as
language, and there would be social infringements, a romantic encounter,
trouble with the police, things purchased and stolen, that sort of thing.
The project was WAY too time-consuming, but ultimately worth doing,
eventually.  But to make it a story and a lesson at the same time got me in
over my head, and increased the "circular" dilemma even more.  How do you
combine a story with a grammatical introduction, when all parts of speech
are needed all the time?  I've seen Heini's "Welsh is FUN-tastic, where he
does something like this with cartoons, but it's another thing to do it in
your own language. I had thought of going back to the boring old system of
providing a "quiz" at the end of every chapter in the Grammar, but that's no
fun.  There's no story.  When I'm freed up for pursuing creative endeavors,
I'll get back to that.  It might make a very nice hypertext, an artform I'm
exploring in other dimensions of my life.  Tremendous hard work, and needing
a real domain--I'd like to get a domain name and purchase more than just 20
megabytes.

> In any case, thanks very much for your feedback. That's what prods me
> to do what needs to be done rather than what I habitually do. :-)
You're very welcome, Teoh!

Sally

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