Speaking Lojban

["Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org>]

>From: Invent Yourself <xod@sixgirls.org>
>Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
>
>On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group wrote:
>
>> Finally, xod DID succeed in making it through the full two days here
>> speaking only Lojban, and many others took up the more limited challenge of
>> conversing with him in the language. Lojban definitely works!  Our
>> compliments to xod; may there be more like him next year, now that we know
>> it can be done.
>
>Nora also spoke only Lojban at at Logfest, using English only where her
>hostess and Secretary duties forced her to speak to the jbonalka'e.
>
>It hurt my head, but my intuitive knowledge tripled! I think Nora & I were
>at about the same level but Nick was still ahead of us both, speaking so
>quickly that I often could not comprehend the sentences. Robin Powell kept
>up very well, especially considering that it was his first Logfest. A
>great deal of my extended conversation with Nick occurred away from
>Logfest when we went at ate dinner at an Ethiopian spot in DC.
>
>All of us were stumbling along with a literary style of Lojban,
>over-formal and over-complex, that would never be applied in conversation.
>I am convinced now that spoken Lojban (which, optimally, is used on irc
>too) busts the main selbri down to an attitudinal. This is usually
>possible. For instance, "mi na birti le du'u" --> "ju'ocu'i". "mi djica le
>nu" --> ".au". Our lack of facility with these attitudinals made our
>spoken utterances pedantic and imposed that our listeners usually parse
>one more set of cmavo pairs they wouldn't otherwise have needed to.

I had been practicing mostly the attitudinals, so if you recall I had more
trouble with gismu than you, but I think I did a lot of compressing bridi
(and whole jufra) down to attitudinals.  And we managed to have a decent
discussion in Lojban with whole jufra as well.  Still, you're right.  We
were making extremely deeply-nested sentences about {mi jinvi le nu do
xusra le nu...} where a few well-placed attitudinals would have done the
trick (pe'i, etc).

~mark