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Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 17:02:56 -0500
From: Rob Speer <rspeer@MIT.EDU>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban] Re: shorthand for conversations
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On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 12:02:29AM +0300, Cyril Slobin wrote:
> coi rodo
> 
> There is often a need to express some conversation in lojban. Of course
> there is a straightforward way to do it:
> 
>     la .alis. cusku lu ko'a li'u
>     .i la bob. cusku lu fo'a li'u
> 
> which exactly corresponds to English:
> 
>     Alice said "this".
>     Bob said "that".
> 
> But in long conversation (imagine play text) the endless repeatition of
> all this "said" (lojban "cusku") quickly became boring. In English we
> can use a shorter notation then:
> 
>     Alice: this.
>     Bob: that.

What we've got already is sei - except, since you don't want to repeat
"cusku" over and over, you'd have to end the sei with se'u, and here
you're using quite a lot of syllables anyway:

lu
i sei la alis se'u ko'a
i sei la bab se'u fo'a
li'u

You could also use to'i...toi for this.

lu
i to'i alis toi ko'a
i to'i bab toi fo'a
li'u

-- 
sei la rab.spir cusku