On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 11:05 PM, la vinsent.
<pva003@gmail.com> wrote:
coi rodo,
I'm relatively new to lojban and have a question about lujvo. Since there are so many rafsi, how is it reasonable to assume that others, even those who are "fluent", would be able to mentally parse the lujvo into its rafsi parts and understand which brivla the rafsi is short for in normal conversation? I do not think that the human brain's language centers are capable of this type of language processing, at least not at a reasonable speed. Sure, you can figure out lujvo, but not quickly enough to have a conversation using lujvo made up on the spot, only lujvo that are commonly used.
co'o rodo
While it is true that even realtively fluent lojbanists might have difficulties spontaneously decomposing ad hoc lujvo composed entirely of obscure rafsi, those that are more commonly used -- gau, mau, cau, bi'o, pre, pli, xag, dei, mro, etc. present no difficulties and easily understood, and context can easily refresh your memory if you can't remember a more obscure rafsi, since they are limited to being letters in the original gismu (unless it's a cmavo-derived rafsi, which can be more cahllenging). It's no different than, for example, an English speaker seeing the word "subdermal" for the first time. For example, I just came across the word "temsepcau" for the first time, in the Snow White story, and recognized immediately as temci+sepli+claxu, (time interval-separation-lack), but I admit I hadn't the foggiest idea what the lujvo itself meant, and had to look it up.
--gejyspa