This week we have a question from David. Can you identify the following language and translate it into English? Note: to make this slightly more difficult, I’ve made a phonetic transcription of the sentence using the IPA. The language isn’t normally written like this.
Clues: This a well-known proverb. The language is a constructed one built over a period of many years and only a few people actually speak it.
Here’s a recording of another sentence in the same language.
I’m sure it’s Lojban coz we have to learn about other constructed languages during our studies (one of my majors is Esperanto language and literature), but I don’t remeber a thing in connection with Lojban
It is indeed Lojban. Well done Laci. Any idea what it means?
Colloquially “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
Literally something like
lo – “it is really true that”
rokci – “rocks”
poi – “which are”
gunro – “rolls”
ze’e – “during that time”
na – “it is not true”
te clika – “they have moss growing on them”
Steve – that’s correct. Do you actually speak Lojban? Any idea what the recording means? All I know is that it’s Lojban.
It seems this question was too easy! Laci and/or Steve, would you like to come up with a more difficult question for next week? If you would, please send it to me by email.
well sorry but not 🙁 if I remeber right “lo” is an article and “na” is a kind of negation but that’s all. It’s a rather strange language for me, interesting but strange…
oh Steve is the winner 🙂 congratulations. Do you really speak Lojban? :O It wasn’t easy it was my luck to know something about it 🙂
I’m sure Steve is more capable of inventing a new question 😀
I’m still curious: what’s the big plus of learning an art language except it may be cool to impress other people?
It helps get your point across in business….