pamo'o <> li'u>> .i lei puze'a tirna cu milxe ke cfipu cmila .i la paul. bacru <> gi'e cevni melbi co dasni lo xekri birtu'ucau .i'ero'u nercre .i ge lerci tcika vi le barja gi cevni carmi co xekri fa le tsani za'a loi selca'o selne'i .i so'o ve barja mo'u cliva .i la lizbet. na'e go'i cadykei {be le xekri tedykerfa be la paul. kalsa be'o} se mlifanza cisma no'e zanru le xajmi .ivusaibo ti'e xekri kalsa loi juntytri .ii poi vlipa joi vlile joike daspo joi finti vau.u'a .ikivive'i simsa go'i ro'a .i'unai no'i la liz. dasni lo grusi notcre (to leno'a cu se kanla loi danmo blanu za'a toi) be <> ne loi lerfu co xekri .i mi (to lego'i cu se kerfa loi na'e kalsa za'a toi) cairmau meleli'i grusi .i grusi fa lemi plokarlycre .e le palku .e le kosycre noi jgena se dasni ru'u le xadmidju .i su'o prenu cu ba'anaita'o sanga bacru <> .ina'igo'i sa'e .i lu'e gy.ce'ory.ce'o.ubuce'osy. cuka'u drani se basti lu'e xy.ce'o.ebu ce'o ky.ce'ory. .ita'ocu'i su'u xekri kei vi le kafybarja ni'oremo'o su'o bevri cu.a'acu'i masno kalsydzu zo'i loi ve barja .i la paul. cu tavla (to leno'a mebri cu jurja'o .i le laurxajmi pu'i vlipa .au toi) fi leli'i ge'utro .i <> <> <> <> <> <> (to pu'i vlipa .au fi leka smaji ke tcila prami joi pendo noisu'anai se mupli na'ebo lecaca'a seltai .i'o toi) <> .i la paul. ce la liz. co'a cisma simtipyda'a ni'a le jubme .i la liz. (to gasta bo demxa'e ce margu bo jamfu ce xamsi bo kanla vau .io toi) certu lezu'o bracau damba .i mi se mliburna ctacarna co na'eke bracau damba certu gi'e zgana le barja ni'o le patlu'i kujo'u le jukpa puza cliva .ija'ebo le barja cu tatpi smaji .iji'a le trixe be le barja be'o {noi di'i krasi {leka to'e cando gi'e kurfa kei} ki'u {lepu'u ru vi ri zdidabysnu (to <> <> <> toi) tigni fi loi ve barja}} cu ca malmliselgu'i ke dukri'a kunti .i la paul. jinga fi la liz. lenu birvrajvi .i la liz. go'i fi mi fu'i (to ba'e dukri'a kunti toi) .i lerci tcika vi le barja .i mi'a pu'o jbuboikei ni'ocimo'o le jatna <> mi <> .i le re jibni be mi depci'o catlu le jatna .i le jatna <> .i la paul. ce la liz. smaji casnu lenu ri jo'u ra ba litru la'e le merko .i le jatna cu degji jarco le clani ke blabi creka xadyti'e be le cnino be mi gi'e cisma bacru <> gi'e cliva .i la liz. bacru <> .i le re se cimei na lojbo .i mi <> la paul. <> mi <> la paul. <> li'u>> mi <> la liz. <> la paul. <> (tosa'a lemu'e sitna na dunli lemu'e xusra .i la paul. cu nalri'i bacru la'ezo simfra gi'u xusra .i loi cmavo be "zo zo'o na'o banzu lenu lo te sitna lo se xusra cu frica .i lemu'e mi se sitna cu te ciste lo pemci joi kelci jenai xusra plitadji be la paul. bei le bangu bei lenu jikca pluja .i na nibli fa le nunsitna lenu morna sinma .i na nibli na'ebolesego'i.u'i .i mi mutce me"zoto tavla .ixuse'izo'o purpla go'i toi) la liz. <> .i lerci tcika vi le barja .i mi'a puba'o jbuboikei .i lei bevri cu.a'acu'i masno bo kalsydzu fa'u sutra bo kalsydzu fa'u cando .i casnu loi sancrfrikative .e loi relcisrampre girvlici'e .e loi nalzva pendo ca'o le nicte noi sruri be loba'a vu trene co pelxu gusni nenri pamei ke sirji darno xemkla zmitai ke snura grusi nalkalsa kunti be'o .uo xekri Colin translates: 1. "That's right. And then he said 'Take heed of the mammals'" Uncertain chuckles among the listeners. Paul, god-like in a black sleeveless (hm, sexy!) undershirt, said "You mean, of the mammalian state." It is late at the bar, and the sky is supremely black, seen from the windowed building. (Note 1) Some customers leave. Lizbeth, not leaving, plays with Paul's wild black hair and grins uncomfortably, not liking the joke. Far away, a black chaos of terrible black holes, destroying and creating with fearful strength and violence. (Note 2). And right here, the same sort of thing going on. Liz (with smoky blue eyes) in a grey T-shirt that says "Love is being strongly attracted to people whether male or female" in black letters. And I (her hair is not wild) am even more grey. Grey are my shirt, my trousers, the jersey tied round my midriff. Somebody ? sings "Grey man, in grey clothes, riding a grey horse" (note 3). Actually they don't. Properly, GRUS are replaced by XEKR. That's "black" in the bar. Notes: 1. I can't really make sense of this sentence. I have assumed that "za'a" is a mistake for "ga'a", as "xekri" has no x2 place. But what is intended by "cevni carmi co xekri" I don't know. Nick: "god-like black" in the original; "God" prefixed is an emphatic in Greek and, I think, Aramaic, but I'm not sure how effective it is in Lojban. Colin: "God" prefrixed is emphatic in many forms of English too, but I object to and will wilfully misunderstand it in Lojban. Nick: I meant {se canko se nenri} to denote those contained by the building with the windows, but that's obviously a bit too lazy. Doesn't work. You mean "nenri", not "se nenri" (as I suspected), And I have NO idea how *that* happened.. but however you do it, the "se canko" modifies the "nenri" not the "se nenri". Hmmm... how about "se ke selca'o selne'i"? I think it works, but it would give me kittens if I came upon it in a text. (.... like a good deal of the present text.... zo'o). *frown* really? Why isn't {se canko se nenri} paraphrasable as {se nenri be le se canko} (which here should be selca'o nenri anyway, of course). 2. "kalsa" wants a "ka" for its x2, so I'm not sure what to make of this. I was lazy with the place structure of "kalsa" too, mandating that it be "a chaos of...", which I'd already translated in Colossal Cave as "kalsysu'a". The same sort of thing going on in a *social* sense. As I said, I had some problem with UI in your text. So pe'i did you. ROhA (he said, arbitrarily inventing a purely formal subclass of UI, but you know what I mean) are specifically defined as "emotion category/modifier" -ie they modify the speaker's attitude about the utterance, whether that is expressed or not. Consequently what you've said is that you have some feeling on a social scale about the sentence, NOT that it is true in a social kind of way. This is what I meant by my comment about "vusai". I think you're trying to get a sort of back-door tanru modification, and committing a category error. (What's the Lojban for 'flame off'?) Guilty; and I've spent the past couple of days trying to weasel out of this one, but... yeah. I'll let my thoughts crystallise on this one... {de'a dabysnu}? 3. I can't make anything of "ba'anaita'o" - (mark-nation) board ba'anaita'o is three cmavo. .o'onairu'ero'a srera .i do zu'unai drani Having said which, I'm not sure what it means. I've a feeling I know what you meant by it, viz. "unexpectedly, somebody started to sing". Another category error. "ba'a" is about the quality of information in the statement - I suggest that "ba'a" means "Whatever it is I'm claiming is not something I know for a fact, but something I expect to be so", and contrasts with "za'a" and "ka'u" (I think it can co-occur with "ti'e" and "ja'o" however). I'm not sure what kind of negation is "ba'anai" (possibilities are "I'm stating this but I don't actually expect it to be true"; "I assert this with an evidential other than ba'a, such as za'a"; or "I expect that the converse of this is true"). Either way, I don't believe it can convey the attitude that I think you mean here - I would suggest something on the lines of ".ueru'e" or "i'ucu'i". Well, the at times rather impressionistic scalar negations of UI words are not something for which I can take credit :) {ba'anai} is glossed in the lists as "I remember" (and {ba'acu'i} as "I experience"), and intended to denote that the predication was recalled from (cultural) memory. 4. I am impressed with this piece of writing, while at the same time, I am not at all sure that it works. It's full of untranslatable things, that I read and get something from, but I'm not certain it's what Nick means. A narrow translation would put in all sorts of things that don't quite make sense, and I've made sense of them in English by being impressionistic. Yeah... trying to be creatively Lojbanic, but I may be in over my head... Examples: ".ivusaibo" - the "sai" says there is an strong but unspecified emotion attached to the "vu" (far away). [It does not intensify the "vu" itself]. Well... needn't it? "notcre" for (message-bearing) t-shirt is meaningful only because we are familiar with them - cf my inability to understand "ba'anaita'o" which is probably just as clear a metaphor. 5. What I do like very much is the use of a long tanru with interior linkargs to express a series of contemporaneous or sequential actions: .i la lizbet. [[[[[na'e go'i] ] se mlifanza] cisma] no'e zanru] le xajmi "Lizbet [[[[[not doing that-ly] -ly] mildly annoyed-ly] smilingly] neutrally approved] the joke" This rather nicely reflects the Japanese "-te" or the Mongolian "-ji" ... kolin 6. Nick responds: >Paul, god-like in a black sleeveless (hm, sexy!) undershirt, said "You >mean, of the mammalian state." I meant it to mean "hm, you're talking mammals here" or "it's a mammal situation", but that's fair. Astute readers may recognise this as a segue from Iain's Saurichsia piece. 7. >Actually they don't. They don't, as far as the right cultural context is concerned (It's a Greek folk song.) 8. >Properly, GRUS are replaced by XEKR. I'm trying to say "the string GREY is replaced by the string BLACK". 9. > That's "black" in the bar. There's a blackness going on in the bar. Colin: I was trying to get over the deliberate vagueness of "su'u". 2. A couple of waiters were slowly making their erratic way towards the drinkers. Paul was talking about being the active partner in sex, his face serious. The loud joke had caused that. (note 1) "I've too let the other person control", ruefully. "But last night I dominated Liz." (note 2) "Was that planned?" "Not quite sure - I think it was accidental." "Paul's a pain, isn't he, Liz?" "Yes, a real pain. Look, stop being so nasty." "Go on then, make me!" (something had been enough to make the quiet detailed (?) friendly and loving relationship which does not normally show this behaviour (note 3)) "I will!" Paul and Liz started kicking eath other gleefully under the table. Liz, steel-fisted, quicksilver-footed, sea-eyed, is an expert at unarmed combat. I turned away, embarassed, and not good at unarmed combat, and looked round the bar. Notes: 1. I can't make much sense of this: what the 'laurxajmi' is, in what sense it was 'powerful', nor, especially, what it is that Nick is wanting ('au'). Actually, it would have made sense had I said {le laurxajmi goi la paul.}, or {le laurxajmypre}: ("This loud joker has shown strength...") 2. I think "se go'i" is very confusing after a "se ge'utro". I *think* I've got it right ("go'i" represents the entire selbri, so the "se" unconverts it into "se se ge'utro"), but even if it's correct, it's going to be a long time before anybody is confident enough to be sure of that sort of thing on the fly. I would prefer a "ku'i" or something to make assurance doubly sure. >"I've too let the other person control", ruefully. "But last night >I dominated Liz." (note 2) >"Was that planned?" >"Not quite sure - I think it was accidental." "I *always* get topped! Heh, but I topped *Liz* last night!" "On purpose?" "Nah, must have been an accident." 3. I can't get a lot out of this sentence in detail, though I think I have the gist. Again, I don't know what it is that's supposed to be being powerful, nor why Nick wants it, and I don't know what a 'detail friend and lover' is. >"Yes, a real pain. Look, stop being so nasty." She said, looking at him adoringly... I can't find that in there. Did you mean "iu" rather than "i'u"? >"Go on then, make me!" (something had been enough to make the quiet >detailed (?) friendly and loving relationship which does not normally show >this behaviour (note 3)) Oh! Er, you'll kick me for this: Yes I will. (See below) it's a continuation of the previous parenthetical clause. The repetition of {vlipa} clearly isn't enough to bind the two parentheticals together, and I'll revise it into an explicit bind. ("He has shown strength in close friendship/love, which isn't exemplified by this kind of behaviour! :) ") The {tcila} is obviously weak. OK, I was wrong with the x3 of vlipa, but I don't think your sumti does what you want. It's a property of (somebody being) quiet, close lovers and friends - I think you probably want the "smaji" outside the "ka". I'm not quite sure what "close" means in this context. How about "lamji"? (like "jibni", this is not confined to spatial adjacency). Otherwise, paradoxically, "slabu" seems to do it. Once again, lovely flavours in your use of long tanru, to-toi brackets (but you overdo them, and they tend to be very unclear without their x1's), attitudinals. Why do I structure this whole narrative on such a rabbit-warren of parenthetical comments? I don't know, the self-commenting, double-narrative perplexity, made *formally* possible by Lojban's unambiguous punctuation, intrigued me; I don't think it was wise to do it so cavalierly though (I'll still do it, because there's a point to it, but I'll build in more safety valves.) But you're not using it that way. You're taking Lojban's unambiguous punctuation as the frame, and then clothing it liberally in several of the structures which are specifically not unambiguous, viz tanru, no'ervaismu tergerna (parenthesis) and selru'a sumti (omitted arguments). The result is something rather gnomic and evocative, but miles from the precision that Lojban was (I believe) designed for. In particular, Lojban says absolutely nothing about the relationship of a no'ervaismu tergerna to the surrounding text; it is therefore formally impossible to relate several such together. (Of course this can be done pragmatically, as you were intending, but that is outside the defined grammar, and even, I suggest, outside any level of semantics which we may somedaay define. This is not to censure you for doing this, but please be aware what you are doing. I am not happy with some of the tanru and lujvo - it took me quite a while working out what a 'dense-hand' might be. That long inverted tanru in the last sentence I translated gives me problems. I understand the words, and think I have understood the sense, but for the life of me I can't work out what you were trying to achieve by that "co". Literally, afterthought tanru modification. Like postposed adjectives in free order languages. My lack of self-defence competence characterised me, but is an afterthought to my turning. (And a self-mocking aside, that shouldn't be foregrounded.) Fair enough. By this point, I was so concentrating on the wierdnesses of your construction, that I missed this simple intention. I've also assumed that the "se" before "milburna" was a mistake (I don't suppose you meant that I - you - were an embarrassING look-turner) - and I'm not at all sure about 'look-turner' - 'turn-looker' would appear more appropriate to me. Colin: no'ervaismu tergerna - no'e vajni smuni te gerna - neutrally-important-meaning grammatical-form 'Bracketed expression' (but could be other kinds of aside such as vocatives too) selru'a sumti - se sruma sumti - assumed argument 'Omitted argument'