Lojban On XKCD

[nemorathwald]

This work is courtesy of the XKCD webcomic, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

To the man with a hat I could say {jo'a go'ira'o zo'o} -- "That's true for me too. (humorously)" The man without a hat is not entirely correct. In Lojban one can speak as illogically as one wishes to speak. But by pointing that out, I'm exhibiting the sort of detail-oriented pickiness the man with the hat refers to. :)

For Lojbanists, getting xkcd'ed is as good as getting Slashdotted, Dugg or Farked! That means the author of xkcd is expressing a sentiment similar to Groucho Marx's statement, "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."

Perhaps we came to his attention from our translation of another one of his comics:


Needless to say, it took no time at all before a Lojbanist translated this comic:

Comments

[rachelann1977.livejournal.com]

So, is this a good thing?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I consider this an awesome thing. We can definitely laugh at ourselves, and I expect exposure to xkcd's target audience (math, linguistics, and sarcasm) will result in at least one more Lojban enthusiast.

[metalfatigue]

"zo'o"? "Attention! I am going to tell you a joke now!"?

Please.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's well-established custom in the Lojban-speaking community to tag a statement as humor if it could otherwise be taken as insult.

[metalfatigue]

So it's not an obligatory morpheme?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

No, it's not mandatory to use it. Any Lojban utterance may rely on user interpretation as much as desired. It doesn't usually force a statement to be unambiguous, it merely allows it more thoroughly for those who feel the need to expend the effort to a desired degree of precision.

[metalfatigue]

It's also worth noting that, in reposting the image, you have dropped the title= attribute ("zo'o ta jitfa .i .e'o xu do pendo mi") attached to it in its original home.