shorthand for conversations

["Cyril Slobin" <slobin@slobin.ran.pp.ru>]

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.

Is it a way to obtain the same brevity in lojban? Due the restriction of
audio-visual isomorphism, some cmavo should be used instead of colon. I
believe it can be a new experimental cmavo of selmaho COI, indicating
the producer of current sentence. Let us take, for example, {xi'e}
(similar to {mi'e}). Then or example became somewhat like this:

    xi'e .alis. ko'a
    .i xi'e bob. fo'a

An alternate approach is using a cmavo of selma'o ZOhU, which makes the
syntax even closer to English, but seems for me less natural for lojban.

Any comments?

co'o mi'e kir.

--
Cyril Slobin <slobin@slobin.ran.pp.ru>