No Subject

[Undetermined origin c/o Postmaster <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!POSTMASTER>]

>>  Reply-To: Undetermined origin c/o Postmaster <POSTMASTER@EARN.CUVMA>

I must apologise for that (I like apologising for things beeyond my control
%^) - my machine-in-exile here is adding a bit of verbiage in "Received from"
header that the lojban-list handler dislikes. Please bear with me on this
one...

>>  > >  <...> I kept saying "where's the punchline". Um... sorry about that.
>>  Well, "he cut the tail off" (which took me a minute to see, with me getting
>>  confused by the nesting)... yeah, and? I *think* it was the failure to set
>>  up any suspense, which I suspect is a cultural thing.

Ivan translates the joke, and then adds another. No, I *got* it - its just that
the amount of suspense and "think about it!" varies from culture to culture.
Take the following joke (not mine, it appeared in the Age newspaper, where
comedians had to contribute jokes in honour of our Comedy festival. Btw,
Oz comedians are really big at the Edinburgh Festival, I hear (mostly, I hear
this from the comedians themselves)):

(to tell x2 x3: I'll say ta'acru: le tavla joi bacru cu ta'acru le selcru
le se tavla le te tavla)

ru'azo'o loire jvixi'a casnu vi lo xalgusta .i le pamoi cu ta'acru fi le
remoi felu lo cizra pe mi pu fasnu .iva'i mi bajryjvi fo le zemoi bele'inu
xirma bajryjvi .i mi zemoi le'i jivna leka sinxa selme'e .i mi co'i zemoi le'i
jivna leni jinga .icaziku mi co'a cortu le zunle tulgapru li'u
.i le remoi cu bacru lu cizra caicai .i le mintu cu fansu mi .iva'i mi
bajryjvi fo le zemoi bele'inu xirma bajryjvi .i mi zemoi le'i jivna leka sinxa
selme'e .i mi co'i zemoi le'i jivna leni jinga .icaziku mi pa'aco'a cortu le
zunle tulgapru .ue li'u
.i lo jvigerku noi nenri le xalgusta cu klama le jvixi'a gi'e bacru lu .u'uro'a
tu'a mi dicra le pu'u do casnu .imu'ibo le mintu cu fansu mi .uesai .iva'i mi
bajryjvi fo le zemoi bele'inu gerku bajryjvi .i mi zemoi le'i jivna leka sinxa
selme'e .i mi co'i zemoi le'i jivna leni jinga .icaziku mi pa'aco'a cortu le
zunle tulgapru .ue.i'u li'u
.i lere xirma cu simxu catlu seci'o leka manci .ibazibo le xirma cu bacru lu
.uecaicai.u'e le gerku pu'i tavla li'u

Now if the joke was being told in Korean, the greyhound would add:

lu .ua mi jimpe .i do cfipu ki'u lenu mi noi gerku cu tavla .i lenu go'i cu
xajmi ki'u lenu do noi xirma cupa'a naka'e da'inai tavla li'u

In my culture, this is how you kill a joke. And because the delivery of jokes
(and indeed, as Umberto Eco has nicely argued, the whole of comedy) is so
culture-dependent, jokes in Lojban will prove problematic.

By the way, as you'll find if you download the lastest ma'oste off the PLS,
we killed {du'a} the BAI ages ago (it used to mean {fi'o dunda}). The feeling
was that this was prepositionese, and it was more appropriate for Lojban
(not a prepositional language, at least not according to Nora) to express
the "dative" of tedu'a as a separate bridi.

(Though you could argue the use of {seci'o} above is just about as
prepositionish).

Nick Nicholas.