[lojban-beginners] Re: POM lines 1

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Wednesday 17 January 2007 15:51, Cortesi wrote:
> OK, encouraged by the lack of anybody saying no, here is a first bit
> of dialog to critique.
> (The explanation of POM and its current state is at http://www.tassos-
> oak.com/tempp/barsoomian.html)
>
> The audience's first sight of the princess, Dejah Thoris, is a scene
> that does not appear in the book. She is discovered on the deck of
> her flying yacht. Her crew chief approaches her carrying a toasty-
> looking chunk of machinery and the following dialog occurs:
>
> JARL THON
>
> coi noltru ti'u ga'i nai le ti nenli'i cupra a'onai spofu
>
> SUPER: Princess, this ray generator is hopelessly broken

{noltruti'u} is one word. {noltru ti'u le cupra} means "is a royal at the time 
of the producer". Do you mean {cabra} instead of {cupra}?

"hopelessly broken" means "broken so that there is no hope of fixing it". 
{a'onai spofu} means "I don't hope that it's broken". {cikrynandu spofu} may 
be what you want.

> ma'a na kakne lo ca'a cupra le lafti
>
> SUPER: We cannot continue to generate lifting force.

Yes you need {nu} here. Since the same speaker is continuing, you need {i} at 
the beginning, or else {ma'a} ends up being a sumti of {spofu}.

> JARL THON
>
> le go'i mleca le cacra
>
> SUPER: Less than an hour.

{lo cacra be li me'ipa}, or if you want to shorten it but not fill in the 
blank (which is likely in conversation), {cacra li me'ipa}

mu'omi'e .pier.