is this correct

This is a page where people can ask whether they've correctly understood, written, or translated some non-trivial bit of Lojban.



I want to say that I wrote five vowel epigrams, each of which uses only one of Lojban's five basic vowels, and all of which together use all of them. Here's what I came up with. I think it's right, but I'm not sure.

.i mi finti mu da poi karsna se cpinyctusku .ije ro da selpau pa ko'a goi le mu lojbo ke sampu karsna .ije lu'o ro da selpau ro ko'a

mi'e jezrax

  • You want "For each of Lojban's 5 vowels I wrote exactly one epigram that uses only that vowel" = "le mu lojbo -vowel goi ko'a zo'u mi finti pa -epigram poi ro -vowel in ke'a is of type ko'a". I don't think it's clear what quantifying over ko'a means, so I find it difficult to say for sure what your Lojban actually means if interpreted literally. --And
  • .i ki'e .and. A big improvement. Running this through the jezrax filter, I get .i mu da poi lojbo ke sampu karsna zo'u mi finti pa me'e karsna se cpinyctusku poi ro karsna po'e ke'a du da (I'm glad I got to use po'e!)
  • It gets the logical form right. I don't get what the me'e is doing there, though. Also, if "ro karsna **du** da", then each karsna must be a vowel type, not a vowel token, but then does it make sense for there to be a ponse/po'e relation between epigram and vowel type? --And
  • me'e translates the quotation marks in I wrote five "vowel epigrams", each....
  • The type/token issue is tricky. The type and token are not mintu or du (the same), but they are dunli (equal in value) with an appropriate x3, and the token is me the type. In this case me does not seem to introduce any ambiguity, so the corrected version is .i mu da poi lojbo ke sampu karsna zo'u mi finti pa me'e karsna se cpinyctusku poi ro karsna po'e ke'a me da.


'the bell rings'

le janbe cu janbe?

da janbe?

A bell is more than just something that rings.

'it's raining'

ca'a carvi

  • That's good. Often the meaning will be clear from context (you have just looked out the window), and all you need say is carvi. Other times you may need to be clear (you're writing e-mail), and you'd go for ca carvi. There are lots of ways to say anything.
  • carvi is inspecific as to the type of precipitation (lo snime .a lo sicpi .a lo bratu .azo'e).


What is a good translation of 'Intellectual Property'? Is it as simple as: sidbo ponse?


Created by admin. Last Modification: Tuesday 13 of April, 2004 21:54:49 GMT by anagram.