Re: New Website! Chovur (with sound)

Davis, Iain E. writes:
 > > From: Joseph Fatula [mailto:fatula3@ATTGLOBAL.NET]
 >
 > > What sorts of things would you recommend?  As I made up the
 >
 > I'm not the person being addressed, but peering at lesson 1:
 >
 > You may want to add two things:
 >
 > A short list of the vocabulary used in your examples.
 >
 > And comment on (if I puzzled it out correctly) what appears to be a VSO
 > word order.
 >
 > Right now, the reader has to work that out from "elimination &
 > repetition", that is:
 >
 > Looking at the sentences, I assume "se" being translated as "is" in the
 > english, and that "kosich" is eats.  Only because they're duplicated in
 > sentences next to each other.  Next, with a little more elimination, I
 > can work out that horse is "senga" (because of the two different
 > sentences with a horse).  From there, if I assume that senga's position
 > is significant, I can work out the rest.
 >
 > Something like (lesson 0, perhaps) might introduce a basic sentence and
 > "break it down" so that the reader can see what is what in a sentence
 > (and get 2-4 vocabulary items simultaneously).
 >
 > Without reading the whole thingl, I suspect what you're missing is
 > explainatory text...you have examples that demonstrate the features of
 > the language, but no supporting text to guide the reader so that he/she
 > knows what they're being shown. :)
 >
 > I often have the same problem...I don't write enough text explaining
 > what I mean (in everything I write...hmm...talking also). :)
 >

Yes, these are the kind of things I was thinking about.

Significantly, a monoglot English speaker doesn't necessarily have any
clear idea what case is, or that some languages lack a definite and
indefinite article.  It's not really fair to expect them to work out
how the language functions from five examples - even if they come up
with the right interpretation, they won't have any idea how generally
the rules apply.  So far as I can see, you don't even provide answers
for the exercises, so the only way to tell if they've got it wrong is
to look out for a contradictory usage in a later example.

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