Re: TEXT: Haiku

[Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

Matthew proposes this as a lojban haiku

    le solji flecu
   cu kuspe le lalxu ca
      le nunsolcanci

for original

    The sun cedes the sky
   to dusk; a golden river
    runs across the lake.

It works, and it's not bad. But I think you can improve it.

1) Why not use rirxe?
In fact 'rirxe le lalxu' is anomalous and may do exactly what you want
with 'river across the lake'

2) One of the differences between the two versions is that English has
a lot of monosyllables, so it can get a lot into 17 syllables. This is harder
in Lojban because content words are polysyllabic, but also because you need
cmavo around them.  But do you?

English renderings of haiku are often much more concrete than Japanese,
because English requires articles, personal verbs etc. To me, a better
approach for a lojban haiku is lots of observatives.

I suggest:

co'u solgu'i
i zi murse  i solji
rirxe le lalxu

Ceasingly sunlight.
Soon comes twilight.  See the gold
river on the lake.

It doesn't have the 'cede the sky' (no more
does your final version), but that's hard to
do anyway - 'te lebna' to me does not have
the sense of complicity of 'cede'. I would
prefer something including 'randa' or 'dunda'.

        Colin