Songs and poetry in Lojban

[eriknatanae...@gmail.com]

Hi!

I have just started learning Lojban, partly because I find the very different grammar interesting, and partly because I am looking for a culturally neutral language for use in some of my art (I am a composer and musician). However, when most people don't know a language it is very important how it sounds. Lojban seems to have a lot of short words, resulting in very many syllables needed for rather simple sentences. It also seems heavy on consonants, while vowels are arguably more important when singing. Do any of you have any experience in making music or poetry in Lojban and would you mind sharing your thoughts about how well suited Lojban is this? Also, if any of you have a short poem in Lojban that I could try to use for a composition, I would be most grateful.

Cheers
Erik Natanael Gustafsson

[guskant]

coi fi'i la .erik.

Here is some lojban songs sung by me:
https://vimeo.com/album/3152276
http://fotono.tumblr.com/tagged/jbosnavei

I know some of recordings of la selpa'i are lojban songs:
https://www.youtube.com/user/shanikuzai/videos

As for a short poem in Lojban for your composition, I recommend a translation by la mukti of "This is just to say" by William Carlos Williams:
https://vimeo.com/113054946#t=8m50s

mi'e la guskant mu'o

 

[selpa'i]

la .guskant. cu cusku di'e

> Here is some lojban songs sung by me:
> https://vimeo.com/album/3152276
> http://fotono.tumblr.com/tagged/jbosnavei
>
> I know some of recordings of la selpa'i are lojban songs:
> https://www.youtube.com/user/shanikuzai/videos
>
> As for a short poem in Lojban for your composition, I recommend a
> translation by la mukti of "This is just to say" by William Carlos Williams:
> https://vimeo.com/113054946#t=8m50s

I added several of our songs to http://mw.lojban.org/lmw/Lojban_music a
few days ago. I might have missed a few.

As for poetry and music in Lojban in general, I do have some thoughts I
can share, but I don't have time right now to formulate them. Maybe
tomorrow.

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

[guskant]

Le dimanche 11 janvier 2015 09:45:37 UTC+9, selpa'i a écrit :

la .guskant. cu cusku di'e
> Here is some lojban songs sung by me:
> https://vimeo.com/album/3152276
> http://fotono.tumblr.com/tagged/jbosnavei
>
> I know some of recordings of la selpa'i are lojban songs:
> https://www.youtube.com/user/shanikuzai/videos
>
> As for a short poem in Lojban for your composition, I recommend a
> translation by la mukti of "This is just to say" by William Carlos Williams:
> https://vimeo.com/113054946#t=8m50s

I added several of our songs to http://mw.lojban.org/lmw/Lojban_music a
few days ago. I might have missed a few.

ki'e la selpa'i gau mi puziku cmima fa so'o da lo liste gi'e kurfa fa ri

Thank you la selpa'i, I added some songs to the list, and made it tabular.

[selpa'i]

la .guskant. cu cusku di'e

> ki'e la selpa'i gau mi puziku cmima fa so'o da lo liste gi'e kurfa fa ri
>
> Thank you la selpa'i, I added some songs to the list, and made it tabular.

mi pu zi viska .i ue .u'e ki'e sai .i lo kufra liste cu banli gi'e melbi
.i .u'i jalge fa lo nu li'a ro da ca djica lo nu da jmina lo cnino da'i
selsa'a pe da lo go'i .i ki'e ke'u

I just saw it. Wow! Thanks a lot! The table is great. Hehe, now everyone
will obviously want to add their new songs to it. Thanks again.

[Erik Natanael Gustafsson]

Thank you! That is very helpful! I've taken a look at the poem and I'll see what I can do with it. The only thing I really don't understand is the te in "te zu'e tu'a lo cersai". What does it do?

[Erik Natanael Gustafsson]

Thanks a lot! I'd love to hear your thoughts on Lojban poetry!

[selpa'i]

la'o me. Erik Natanael Gustafsson .me cusku di'e

> Thank you! That is very helpful! I've taken a look at the poem and I'll
> see what I can do with it. The only thing I really don't understand is
> the te in "te zu'e tu'a lo cersai". What does it do?

{te zu'e} is a preposition meaning "for" as in the intended goal of an
action. Without {te} it would just be {zu'e}, which specifies an actor.

You can apply {se}, {te}, {ve}, {xe} to prepositions just like you can
apply them to predicates. {zu'e} is based on {zukte} (it takes the x1),
while {te zu'e} is the x3 of {zukte}; in other words the {te zukte}.
Thus, {te zu'e tu'a lo cersai} says that {tu'a lo cersai} is a {te
zukte}, a goal.

[Stela Selckiku]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 12:23 PM, <eriknatanae...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi!

fi'i sai!
(Welcome!!)

 

 Lojban seems to have a lot of short words, resulting in very many syllables needed for rather simple sentences.

This is a matter of perspective. Lojban is simply a very very very weird language. When translating into Lojban from a very different language like English (for instance) it can thus sometimes be difficult to say something concisely or in a way that doesn't feel awkward. But the same is also true in reverse-- for instance it's famously difficult to translate into English sentences from Lojban that contain both a command and a question, like the infamous "ko mo" (Make it so that you have some quality, what is that quality?!? or something) or like (inventing an example) "ko klama fo lo drata mu'i ma" (You must go (there) by a different route, and also, why are you going (there), or, why is that? gosh it really is hard to translate :/)

 

It also seems heavy on consonants, while vowels are arguably more important when singing.

This is a matter of style. There's two levels of stylistic choice at which the current consonant-heavy sound of Lojban is constructed (that come to my mind at the moment, anyway). First, there's the choice to leave out buffer vowels. You can say a buffer vowel between EVERY consonant cluster if you want, which can make it almost Polynesian in voweliness. Secondly, there's also the choice to prefer shorter versions of lujvo over ones with fewer clusters, for instance we usually say "ninpre" for newbie but we could prefer "ni'opre" which has a simpler cluster at the expense of one more syllable.

That said, I quite enjoy the clustery sound of today's Lojban. It's better for some styles of singing than others. I think Lojban rap sounds cool, to me the consonantiness gives a pleasant complexity to dense phrases. But who can say really, it's a matter of taste.

 

Do any of you have any experience in making music or poetry in Lojban and would you mind sharing your thoughts about how well suited Lojban is this?

I write a little song in Lojban almost every day. I can't say my little songs are great works of art, but they're not meant as that, just to entertain myself and express myself. To me Lojban is a beautiful place to play. It's so delicate and living and yet so defined and precise, like Calder's mobiles.

But it's a matter of taste. Taste it and see how you like it.

It's not a good language if you expect very many people to understand you, of course. But I'm here, and I'll be happy to hear anything you come up with.


mi'e la stela selckiku

mu'o mristepli

 

[Pierre Abbat]

I haven't done an original song in Lojban, but I've translated some. My
impression is that Lojban takes, on average, a few more syllables than
English. If you try to translate literally, you get a lot more syllables than
if you translate idiomatically.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/le+cmalu+bloti is a French folk song.

Here's a hymn:

doi cevni do'u .au mi jbize'a do
.iju lo kucymudri cu lafti mi
.i sanga lo se du'u mi jbize'a do

.i mi jbize'a do doi cevni do'u

.i ca lo murse mi litru lo kunti
.i ca lo nicte mi vreta lo rokci
.i ku'i senva lo nu mi jbize'a do

.ibo tolcanci fa lo serti be lo
.angeli .i do mi xendo lo dargu
.i mi cu parkla do .i mi jbize'a do

.i cerni pensi lo nu zanru do
.i zbasu la .beitel. lo badri rokci
.i tolgei gasnu lo nu mi jbize'a do

.ibazubo mi voirli'u lo kensa
.i mi lo plini ja tarci cu cliva
.i sa'asku di'e .ui .i mi jbize'a do

Pierre
--
gau do li'i co'e kei do

[Erik Natanael Gustafsson]

 Lojban seems to have a lot of short words, resulting in very many syllables needed for rather simple sentences.

 

This is a matter of perspective. Lojban is simply a very very very weird language. When translating into Lojban from a very different language like English (for instance) it can thus sometimes be difficult to say something concisely or in a way that doesn't feel awkward. But the same is also true in reverse-- for instance it's famously difficult to translate into English sentences from Lojban that contain both a command and a question, like the infamous "ko mo" (Make it so that you have some quality, what is that quality?!? or something) or like (inventing an example) "ko klama fo lo drata mu'i ma" (You must go (there) by a different route, and also, why are you going (there), or, why is that? gosh it really is hard to translate :/)

 That's a good point, and one that would be very interesting to explore once I know the language well enough to start writing real poetry in it.

 

It also seems heavy on consonants, while vowels are arguably more important when singing.

This is a matter of style. There's two levels of stylistic choice at which the current consonant-heavy sound of Lojban is constructed (that come to my mind at the moment, anyway). First, there's the choice to leave out buffer vowels. You can say a buffer vowel between EVERY consonant cluster if you want, which can make it almost Polynesian in voweliness. Secondly, there's also the choice to prefer shorter versions of lujvo over ones with fewer clusters, for instance we usually say "ninpre" for newbie but we could prefer "ni'opre" which has a simpler cluster at the expense of one more syllable.

That said, I quite enjoy the clustery sound of today's Lojban. It's better for some styles of singing than others. I think Lojban rap sounds cool, to me the consonantiness gives a pleasant complexity to dense phrases. But who can say really, it's a matter of taste.

Can you sing on the buffer vowels though? From what I've read about them, they are to be as short as possible. Would it be good Lojban to treat them as syllables if you make sure the real syllables are even longer?
 

 

Do any of you have any experience in making music or poetry in Lojban and would you mind sharing your thoughts about how well suited Lojban is this?

I write a little song in Lojban almost every day. I can't say my little songs are great works of art, but they're not meant as that, just to entertain myself and express myself. To me Lojban is a beautiful place to play. It's so delicate and living and yet so defined and precise, like Calder's mobiles.

But it's a matter of taste. Taste it and see how you like it.

It's not a good language if you expect very many people to understand you, of course. But I'm here, and I'll be happy to hear anything you come up with.

Thank you for your thoughts and your encouragement!

[Oleksii Melnyk]

Few years ago i've translated a song from russian. I've fit it into the original rhythm/music almost perfectly, packed into 1/2 of the rhymed text, preserving the all the jokes, got less than 2(i don't remember any, the text is lost) hard-to-sing consonant clusters, and spent no poetry talent at that. So, in my experience, on

many syllables ... heavy on consonants

it is much better, than russian, or, at least, depends on the author's will.

--

mi'e lex mu'o

[Pierre Abbat]

On Monday, January 12, 2015 05:38:19 Erik Natanael Gustafsson wrote:
> Can you sing on the buffer vowels though? From what I've read about them,
> they are to be as short as possible. Would it be good Lojban to treat them
> as syllables if you make sure the real syllables are even longer?

The buffer vowel is not a phoneme; it's a vowel stuck between two consonants by
people who have trouble pronouncing them together. It normally doesn't make
sense to sing it as a syllable. Occasionally one might do so in some style of
music. I know of a song in Spanish where the word "precioso" is sung as four
syllables; it's much more common in Spanish to sing two vowels to one note
which would be separate syllables in speech.

Pierre
--
When a barnacle settles down, its brain disintegrates.
Já não percebe nada, já não percebe nada.