Subject: Re: [lojban] Speaking Lojban (was: LogFest news

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:13:53 EDT

In a message dated 7/31/2001 9:44:58 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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.
> 
While I am sure that xod is right about the excess of attitudinal predicates 
in speech, I wish to offer a two-fold warning. First, this does NOT mean 
that attitudinal cmavo mean the same as various brivla. That is, the better 
sentences xod envisions will say something different from the prolix ones he 
regrets. On the other hand, the shorter, simpler, ones will usually come 
closer to saying what speaker intended than the more elaborate ones used. 
Secondly, this does not mean that the actually used forms were malglico just 
because they follow the English form rather than the English sense (as they 
do) but that English form is ambiguous and the usage results from following 
the wrong sense of the form. So, as usual, use English with caution and 
understand it before translating it (and before incorporating that 
translation into your Lojban idiolect). In fact, we are much more inclined 
to talk about what we opine, etc., than about the fact that we opine it, and 
thus use attitudinals for these attitudes much more often than brivla. 
English just happens to the same form for both in many cases.