(New Paragraph) Incidentally, Zhang is somewhat drunk,
because he went to another bar. Anyway, Zhang says "Pedro, I mean, friend, do you
mind telling me what you're doing here?" Ranjeet says "I'm with Jyoti and a friend of hers
(really good-looking; what a win!)" Zhang: "I, for you and two beautiful people
accompanying, am happy, friend... I mean, for you
accompanying two beautiful people (to put it precisely), am happy" (We can get
away with "this sentence no verb" in Lojban. And let's not be too
hard on Zhang, either, who has the sense to fix his
Lojban grammar even in his elated state. He has tried to say "for you and
two beautiful people being together", but kansa in Lojban corresponds to
"you are together with two beautiful people": it is not
reciprocal.) Ranjeet: "You're now going to the
Chicken — sure you can manage it? :‑)" Zhang: "You're just waiting to see me dance that,
er, the Chicken at, uh, the
Chicken." (The empathy attitudinal dai expresses
desire, but it's a desire Zhang is projecting onto others. That's roughly
what just is doing in the English: "You must
be wanting it, waiting for me...". Zhang produces one too many lenus, so he has to delete his last one;
note that lenu counts as two words!) Ranjeet: "Everybody in the disco starts shouting
'Please do' — more or less." (Any resemblance
to "Everybody in the house say 'Yeah'" is purely
obscured by Ranjeet's pedantry. The attitudinal
goes after vau, which you may remember from Lesson 5 is the terminator for a sentence; so the
'slight exaggeration' attitudinal applies to the
whole sentence.) Zhang: "Are you really done
sending broadcasts to the pixies?" (Sacrificing Zhang's pretty good
wordplay, considering his 'tired and
emotional' state.) (Ranjeet analyses radio transmissions for the
Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence.)
(Abstractions can be names just like simple sumti.) Note: When you search in Lojban, you search for something that fits
some property, and so you name the property as x2.
That means that you don't say you're searching for good things, but for
goodness — that is, you're searching by checking
whether each thing you come across has goodness or not. This is sort of an
extension of Lojban's fill-in-the-slot approach to questions:
.i mi sisku leka ___
terdi bartu pensi .i lo fange pe la mars. cu terdi bartu
pensi .i lo fange pe la venus. cu terdi bartu pensi .i
lo fange pe la vulkan. cu terdi bartu pensi .i la
jan. na terdi bartu
pensi.
Ranjeet: "Good job! Certainly you talking is
entertaining." (Or more colloquially, "It's fun to hear you
talk.") Zhang: "Yup, it is, isn't it!" (Spoken with
some comical smugness, no doubt...)
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