Se saȥu e sic lŕe ah mŕsyn.

[Raphael]

For some reason, I just looked at the old "Sounds of Almea" page

http://zompist.com/almeasounds.htm

and I noticed that the Ismaîn sample sentence translates as "The prince is less beautiful than a beaver."

But the thing is, since I don't know anything about the usual Ismaîn conventions on aesthetics, I don't have any idea what the intent is here.

Is it meant to be a brutal putdown:

"The prince is so ugly, he's even uglier than that notoriously ugly animal, the beaver!"

Or is it meant as a gentle pushback against over-the-top praise:

"Yes, you're right that the prince is quite beautiful, but even he can't compete with that magnificent animal, the beaver!"

So what's going on?

[zompist]

It's best not to overanalyze my sample sentences. Some dude burst onto the ZBB a few years ago, extremely angry about a sentence in the LCK, and appparently later haunted other boards, spreading lies about me based on more sample sentences. So I really don't want to encourage that tendency. They're just samples, usually intended to be humorous and/or illustrate what the people involved are like.

Anyway, this sentence is part of the section on comparatives in the grammar, and is preceded by this one:

Se saȥuȥee e lŕe ah jirendn.
The princess is more beautiful than an ibis.

It'd be fair to say that extravagant comparisons are fine in Ismaîn (and in many earthly cultures).

The prince example is just a variation on this, showing how to do a "less than" comparison.

[Raphael]

Oh, sorry, I didn't know about that. Thank you for providing background information anyway!