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[lojban] Re: Assistance requested,



de'i li 31 pi'e 12 pi'e 2008 la'o fy. tsofian@aol.com .fy. cusku zoi skamyxatra.
> Happy New Year which I think is gei/ni'o/na'a, but I am just learning.
.skamyxatra

It's "{gekni'ona'a}."  {lujvo}, like all other {brivla}, must contain a
consonant pair within the first five letters (not counting apostrophes and Ys)
in order to keep from being broken up into {cmavo}.  Also, there's no reason to
place slashes between the {rafsi}.

> The human allies of the allies call them something like "treasonous
> destroyers of progress".? How would that be translated into Lojban?

I would translate it as either "{tolsrafavyspo}" (anti-support develop
destroyer) or "{spofavypro}" (destroy-develop-opponent).  Note that, due to the
inevitable semantic ambiguity of {tanru} & {lujvo} formation, anyone unfamiliar
with these words (or familiar with them in a different context) who encounters
the terms might interpret them as "anti-((support-develop) opponent)" or
"(destroy-develop) opponent," respectively.  I suppose "{tolsrafavyspo}" could
be broken up as "{tolsra favyspo}" to make the grouping clearer, or you could
add in a bunch of "{bor}"s or "{kem}"s (or just use a {tanru} with "{bo}"s
and/or "{ke}"s) to make the grouping painfully explicit.  Perhaps the robots
have a database of {lujvo} and their meanings?

> Central to the current plot lines is the release of a Hive Organism of
> extreme lethality unto Earth and the efforts to destroy it before it eats
> everything on the planet (think of the movies Them! and Zulu! being combined
> and you will get a fair image). How would something like "large autonomous
> high gravity biological system?removal superorganism" be rendered?

I would just say "{brazu'e ji'espo rairji'e}" (large-autonomous
organism-destroy extreme-organism) for that, possibly changing the last word to
"{raircemji'e}" (extreme-community-organism) if you want to denote the fact
that it's a hive organism (there's probably a better way to translate that
part, but I don't know it).  I'm not sure how to translate the "high gravity"
bit; how important is that aspect to the description?  Are there a lot of large
autonomous biological system removal superorganisms in this setting that
_aren't_ high gravity?

> Since the aliens are unable to modify their programming (which will cause
> them no end of trouble against the wily Earthers) lojban will be a 100%
> conserved language.

Unfortunately, Lojban in the real world is not 100% conserved.  The two most
notable changes to it have been the Great Rafsi Reallocation of 1993 (1994?)
and the more recent redefinition of "{lo}" and "{le}" (called "xorlo").  Even
if you use Lojban as it is defined at this point in time, what will you do in a
few months (or probably longer) if & when the BPFK comes to a consensus on the
meaning of "COI + {pei}" or one of the other unclear aspects of the language?

> Now the various human groups once associated with the aliens all have lojban
> as their root language but some have been isolated for several thousand years
> and in those cases the language has evolved.

I suppose you could work around the above problem somehow by assigning these
groups Lojban as it was in the real world at different points in time.  Were it
not for the inevitable legal issues, I would even suggest that you make one of
these groups speak Loglan; naturally, they would be very secretive.

mu'omi'e la'o gy. Minimiscience .gy.

-- 
no zo mi nenri zo bende


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