[Tlhingan-hol] Beginner's Grammarian: The hunt is on

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' qurgh, jatlhpu':
> in activity due to qunnoQ and the new words has been great, is it really
> enough to warrant a new BG? 

jangpu' Quvar, jatlh:
> Yes. I would say it is, even with very few beginners, there should be
> someone appointed to welcome these. Even if traffic slows down, even
> with only one newbie in one month, there should be someone to say
> hello. What can happen? A workless BG will not starve to death.

Agreed. Even among prior BGs, not all have had the same amount of experience. I don't think there's any possibility of standardisation of the position and if helping three or four people over the year (though that usually adds up to a great deal more than that in terms of individual questions answered and discussed) is what happens, that's what happens. That's another reason why flexibility in the length of the BG's term is rather important.

jang je qurgh, jatlh:
> True, but is a workless BG worthy of the title of "Grammarian" after
> helping three or four people over a year? I (and others) have helped
> way more people than that for the past two years in the "Learn Klingon"
> group. If we are going to tie a title to dealing with a workload, then
> that workload needs to be equal for each participant in my opinion.

A very fair point. The question is, I suppose, what is the best way of going about it? Would we have a BG for each forum? One for tlhIngan-Hol, one for Facebook, one for Google+, and so forth? Again, standardisation of the position even from one BG to the next is virtually impossible because of the fluctuating nature of group participation, so I don't think we need to be too tied up in how equal the workload is across the various fora.

taH:
> I also think that multiple different descriptions of the same thing
> is very helpful for a student, as it gives them multiple view-points
> to look from.

True, but remember that once the BG has had their say, it's still open slather for anyone else. The BG is the right of first reply, not the right of only reply. So the student can always get those multiple viewpoints; it's just coming in a slightly different way and regulated to an extent by the existence of the BG.

taH:
> We also have enough people that each one of the four beginners
> that have recently raised their hands could get their own, personal,
> BG. Why dump all the work on one person?

With all due respect, you're arguing past yourself with this point. You said just before that there's not enough beginners to justify a BG's workload, but here you argue that one person isn't enough to take on the workload by suggesting it's "dumping" the workload on them. It can't swing both ways.

taH:
> If the goal is to help people learn, then giving them one-on-one
> service seems like it would be them most efficient system.

I'm not against the idea of one-on-one service, but does it need to be from both directions? That's part of the BG's role, really: to provide grammatical explanation on demand to individual learners. It's one-on-one from the student's point of view, but not from the BG's, and I don't think that's a problem. It's also community-building in that regard: the beginners get to know each other and the BG from seeing other KLBC messages going through, and we all get to see who these new people are that are joining us. Conversely, if everyone's got their own separate Grammarian to email when they need to - a buddy system of sorts? - that'd have a tendency to isolate learners even more, which is a big enough problem as it is in the Klingon community.

The other thing is that, several though we Grammarians may be, we've got lives too and can't always dedicate that kind of time. I basically go email dead for two to three months of the year, and also face some mental health problems that mean I may drop out of contact with little notice, and so I'm not really in a position to take on a mentoring role right now. Others have their own things going on. The thing about the BG is that it's only one person who has to make the commitment, and there's a little more leeway in terms of what the skill requirement is.

taH:
> Here's what a new student looking to learn Klingon said about
> mailing lists: "Wow, a mailing list - makes me feel like using
> Windows 95 or  something!"

To be frank, I'm pretty done with the "mailing lists are antiquated" arguments. Antiquated or not, this remains an important framework of communication between Klingon speakers at all levels. Therefore, there should be teaching and learning done within this framework. They can be done elsewhere too, through other platforms like Facebook, and I'm all for that (I'm a member of the Facebook groups too, though not so active over there). But it's this list that's on my mind right now, because I'm a participant in it (not as active as I used to be, but still), and beginners are participants in it, and as an ex-BG and ex-beginner myself, I want those beginners to feel at home right where they are, and not feel like they have to go elsewhere to get a strong education in Klingon.

Now I really feel like a curmudgeon. DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'. I guess I just have a real soft spot for the role of BG. To me it was a stupendous honour being asked to serve and to do a formally-structured part to actively improve the lot of our language - to be honest, I'm nearly as proud of being able to use the title {'utlh} as I am the title "Dr.". But apart from that, my own Klingon improved more in that year than any other three years of my learning. I want others on this list to have the opportunity too, and I know several of the other Grammarians feel the same way. If people are keen on establishing such structures (or similar, like the idea of having one-on-one mentoring or buddying) on the Facebook and Google+ groups, that's wonderful and can only be of benefit to the Klingon community at large. But for my part, I'm afraid I don't have the psychological energy to establish that for three separate fora (let alone putting in the work to establish something new like a one-on-one system), and this is the one I'm focusing on doing something about, for better or for worse.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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