mi fanva da 2

[MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com]

> Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 07:28:35 -0800 (PST)
> From: John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: [lojban] Re: mi fanva da
>
>
> --- MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote:
> > Dmitry <ratson@mail.ru>:
> > 
> > le do fanmo sinxa xu lu le nu smacu cusku
> > na'onai xamgu zmadu le nu tavla 
> > li'u do
>
> "Your final sign for 'the event of atypically
> better than talking mouse sayings' to you ?"
>
> I think a {cu} or so is needed here; at a guess:
>
> {le do fanmo  cu sinxa xu lu le nu smacu cusku cu
> > na'onai xamgu zmadu le nu tavla}  
> (I am not sure about the second {cu}, some
> tense/modals are suffieicent in themselves to
> mark the beginning of the selbri and maybe
> {na'onai} is such.) 
> "Does your last (...) signify to you "Mouse
> saying is atypically better than talking"?
>
> I am still missing something here; I don't get
> "mouse saying," for example.  "cmaci" maybe?

> Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:36:45 -0800
> Subject: [lojban] Re: mi fanva da
> From: Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 07:54:03AM -0500,
> MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote:
> > Dmitry <ratson@mail.ru>:
> > 
> > le do fanmo sinxa xu lu le nu smacu cusku na'onai xamgu zmadu le
> > nu tavla li'u do
>
> ki'a sai
>
> This reads like something the random sentence generator wrote,
> except that it's not a sentence.  You probably need a few "cu", to
> start with.
>
> -Robin




Dmitry's (Russian) sig was "Inogda luchshe pishchat', chem govorit'." ("Sometimes it's better to squeak than to speak", and I suspect that "pishchat'" is a pun, since the similar-sounding "pisat'" means "to write").  

In my translation attempt, I used "smacu cusku" (mouse express) for "squeak", "na'onai" for "sometimes" (and I assumed, possibly incorrectly, that it was a type of tense and so it doesn't need a "cu"), "le fanmo sinxa" ("end sign") for "sig".  Now I realize that I used "lu le nu smacu cusku na'onai xamgu zmadu le nu tavla li'u" as the x2 of "sinxa" (instead of using "smuni"), but then made a sumti out of it (by adding "le do") without adjusting anything else.

The sense I was going for was "Does your sig mean "Sometimes it's better to squeak than to speak" to you?".

Here's a second attempt:
xu lu na'onai le nu smacu cusku cu xamgu zmadu le nu tavla li'u cu smuni le do fanmo sinxa ku do

stevo