unusual style - response to And

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>> > > > coo, mie noi friko ninmu tordu marksista kuo and
>> > > ??? And the African-womanly short Marxist ??? ki'acai?
>> > fi la pou lojbab ralju fe lei jai fau skicu be fo lo jbovla bei fe
>> > maa bei fai ro da poi kea me maa bei fi da fa diu tinbe
>> Rule made by the Chief the lojbab
>> (rule) which is the event of describing
>>  with description: lojbanic words
>>  about us
>>  everybody of us
>>  to somebody
>>  that this describes
>> =The rule made by Chief lojbab about all of us describing us to others in
>> lojban with these words is obeyed.
>> I spent 5 to 10 minutes translating this jufra! What an obfuscation!
>
>Well done, then. Why did you find it difficult? It's in an unfamiliar
>style, but there isn't lots of deep subordination and tons of terminators
>and stuff. Note too that I couldn't write and English or Serbocroat
>sentence of that length that would take you so long to puzzle out.

31 words is a lot of room to obfuscate.  Note that his colloquial
English translation, which is only 21 words, would probably baffle a few
Ebglish speakers on first sight (my kids wouldn't follow it for sure!).
There may not be a lot of deep subordination, BUT there is a lot of
non-deep subordination

la pou lojbab ralju
lei jai fau skicu
ro da poi kea me maa

Each of the three subordinations involves a new or unusual construct,
you have jumbled the sumti order in each level of nesting, and
compounded it with your non-standard orthography.

?pOsSiBlE tHaTe mEaSuReSe oFe iNtElLiGeNcE oFe rAdIcAle aNdSe
cHaLlEnGiNgSe oFe lOjBaNe nOrMsE AsE PrOmUgAtEdE ByE LoJbAnE CeNtRaLe
tHeE rAvInGsE oFe lAtTeRe fOlKsE rEsPoNdInGe tOe tHeE fOrMeRe SeEmSe ToE
BeE StRoNgLye InDiCaTeDe!

31 words (whew)!

(and if I had written it using one of the endless varieties of conlang
phonetic spelling it would have been even worse.

Do you perceive that if you perceived things differently than you do
that you would perceive things differently than you do?  (Hopefully I
got that right %^)

>   [fi la pou lojbab ralju]
>   [fe lei jai fau skicu
>       [be fo lo jbovla]
>       [bei fe maa]
>       [bei fai ro da poi kea me maa]
>       [bei fi da]]
>   [fa diu]
>tinbe
>
>   [Sophy]
>described
>   [the purchase
>       [of flowers]
>       [from us]
>       [for everyone in her class]
>       [last year]]
>   [to us]
>
>Now is that so tough?

That is not even in the same category.  You used the abnormal-to-Lojban
predicate final - or more exactly - you mixed heavy and light
grammatical structures in such a way as to make it less than obviosu
what their boundaries were.  And you rearranged the terms for no
apparent reason except to be obfuscatory.

   [to us]
   [the purchase
       [for everyone in her class]
       [last year]
       [of flowers]
       [from us]
   [Sophy]
described

And even this doesn't capture the use of di'u, fai, ke'a.  Or turn your
English into Lojban of similar structure.

   [Sophy]                                 la sophis
described                               skicu
   [the purchase                           lenu tervecnu
       [of flowers]                          loi xrula
       [from us]                             mi'o
       [for everyone in her class]           seva'u ro cmima br levo'a tadnygri
       [last year]]                          ca le prulamnanca kei
   [to us]                                 mi'o

And the result takes the same number of "words" depending on how you
count them, and is MUCH easier to understand.

>I am trying to test what the language can do, rather than restrict
>myself to a pidginized user-friendly subset of the language.

Poets do that, and poetry of that sort is usually equally obfuscatory
and difficult to understand.  I can't understand Michael Helsem's
English poetry much better than his Lojban, though I can at least
recognize it as grammatical with some difficulty.

>> I agree with Goran. Fi-fa-fu-Lojban is very obfuscating, especially in
>> combination with jaifau-Lojban.
>
>Is there a clear reason for that, apart from its unfamiliarity?

Is there a clear reason why English written other than SVO order is
obfuscatory?  Why do style guides tell people to avoid unnecessary use
of the passive voice?  And when is it NOT considered obfuscatory to say
something in more words than necessary (which Fi-fa-fu-Lojban does,
unless motivated by some kind of term weight or focus consideration).

lojbab