Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Rabbity Sand-Laugher

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 20:48:51 EDT

In a message dated 6/3/2001 4:25:46 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> .u'i .i la pycyn. puza stidi le du'u ma'a gunka tu'a la'e lu la spat. li'u
> po'o .i py. jinvi le du'u ma'a na bredi le li'i pensi le nalselxalbo
> .iseni'ibo py. troci fanta .i ku'i paunai ta'i ma la lojban. ca'o banro .i
> je'unai .e'u ze'eba darlu zo'o
> 
> .i le'e banckule ctuca cu djica lo ka nalselpe'u je nalfarvi selmuzga
> 

I would have said {zgana} rather than {jinvi}, since even with jbofi'e and 
the like it is a rare sentence that passes muster on the list, even after 
several goes-round. And I pretty obviously did not {troci fanta} since we 
have been overborne with troci since, though I did {fanta troci} -- well, not 
even that, simply trying to direct efforts toward more fruitful productions. 
Taking the rehetorical question literally (since it does not seem to have an 
obvious answer), I assume that it will be by more and more people getting 
better and better at more and more interesting things. This is rarely 
achieved by taking on Everest on your first hike, which rather tends to burn 
people out early on. I wish I could count the number of people (I probably 
could, come to that) who have done one abysmal translation of Laotse or Alice 
or a particularly opaque bit of Shakespeare --"just to get started" -- and 
never a lick more, nor are they heard from again. On the other hand, there 
are a few people who started with simple conversations and built on that who 
are still around. Which looks like the better plan for growing the language?
The missing sumti makes the next bit obscure: who would you jokingly (or 
falsely) suggest argue what from now on? How relevant?
And what does the typical language teacher's desire for untouched and 
undeveloped museum exhibits (a desire I don't recall from my days either as a 
student or a language teacher) have to do with anything else here? And why 
the property (whatever it is), rather than the thing itself?