From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Wed Jul 13 15:08:34 1994 Message-Id: <199407131908.AA22823@nfs1.digex.net> Date: Wed Jul 13 15:08:34 1994 Reply-To: Matthew Faupel Sender: Lojban list From: Matthew Faupel Subject: Terseness (Re: New to Lojban) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Bob LeChevalier In-Reply-To: <199407131226.PAA07407@nokia.com> (message from Logical Language Group on Wed, 13 Jul 1994 05:52:29 -0400) Status: RO BO: 2) Lojban seems to be a rather terse language (I like that!). Do you BO: have any idea how many syllables it takes to translate an English BO: passage of say 100 syllables into lojban? Far prefer lojban to BO: Esperanto, which seems to me very verbose and exhausting for even the BO: simplest utterances. BL: Actually, I don't think Lojban is particularly terse, for a couple of BL: reasons (I got a couple of reasons for everything %^) [lojbab then proceeds to give various reasons for why Lojban isn't terse, all of which I basically agree with]. However, I'd like to point out that there is one feature of Lojban which can lead to terseness, namely the use of an observational style of writing. This was quite forcibly underlined for me a few months ago when Colin Fine posted an alternative haiku to one I posted previously: co'u solgu'i i zi murse i solji rirxe le lalxu Brevity is achieved by use of bare selbri and attitudinals, a technique that is perfectly valid in Lojban but which sounds somewhat odd in English. Lojban's lack of meaningful monosyllables (most are just structure words) does rather cut down on the ability to be brief though... Matthew