On 9/3/06, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 11:27:06AM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote: Thought about it more, ran a search. "letadjicaku" can parse as "le ta djica ku" or "le tadji ca ku", both completely valid and sensible. -Robin
It has long been maintained that Lojban is a language in which puns would not work as a form of humor. Strictly speaking of correct Lojban, this is true. But this example made me realize that a clever punster who speaks Lojban can still create humor by speaking an utterance ever so slightly wrong. If the listener is sufficiently good with Lojban, the pattern-recognition engine the human brain will recognize what he said and what he almost said, resulting in a humorous double meaning. This is almost exactly the same mechanism as a pun. I expect a lot of Lojbanic language-dependent humor to depend on a listener recognizing what was _almost_ said. -epkat