History: Lojban Tutorial: Lesson 5

Source of version: 2 (current)

!Lesson 5: Times, days, dates

One way to ask the question "What is the time?" is ''ma
tcika''. We know that ''ma'' is the sumti
question word, so ''tcika'' must be
a selbri meaning "is the time", with the ''ti'' meaning "this event", or, in other words "now". The place structure of
''tcika'' is 


x{SUB()}1{SUB} (hours, minutes, seconds) is the time of state/event x{SUB()}2{SUB} on day/date x{SUB()}3{SUB}, at location x{SUB()}4{SUB}, by calendar x{SUB()}5{SUB}

A full answer would obviously be very long-winded, but remembering the
Lojban convention that you miss out all the places after the last one
you really need, a typical exchange would be: 


# ''ma tcika ti''
# ''li vo''
# "What's the time?"
# "Four"

Note the ''li'', since we are talking about a number here. ''li vo''
is short for ''li vo cu tcika ti''&mdash;"four is the time of this
(event)". 

If we want to be a bit more precise, we need to use ''pi'e''.
This is like ''pi'', but doesn't need to keep the same value. In
normal counting, ''pi'' is a decimal point, in hexadecimal it's a
hexadecimal point and so on, but it never changes its value.
''pi'e'' doesn't have that restriction, so we can
use it to separate hours from minutes. So an alternative answer to the
question could be

;''li vo pi'e mu'':"Five past four."

or if you want to be particularly precise, 

;''li vo pi'e mu pi'e pabi'':"Five minutes and eighteen seconds past four."

Let's imagine, though, that the time is not five past four, but five
__to__ four. We can still say ''li ci pi'e mumu'' (4:55) but we can also
say ''li vo pi'e ni'u mu''. ''ni'u'' is the
Lojban minus sign (for negative numbers, not for subtraction)&mdash;what we
are saying is "4:-5". 


For "half past four" you can also use ''pi'' and say
''li vo pimu''&mdash;4.5. I don't particularly like
this method, but it is perfectly good Lojban. If we are using numbers
for times, it is normal to use the 24-hour system, so 6 p.m. is ''li pabi'' (18:00). 


Another possibility, is to use ''cmene'' for
hours, so "four o'clock" is ''la vocac.'', "five
o'clock" is ''la mucac.'' and so on. For 11 and 12
we need extra numbers. Fortunately
Lojban has these and more; the number system actually goes up to 16
(hexadecimal), so we have the extra numbers 

;''dau'':10
;''fei'':11
;''gai'':12
;''jau'':13
;''rei'':14
;''vai'':15

Obviously for anything
other than talking about computer programming, the numbers 13-15 are
useless, but we can use 10-12 for hours. "Ten o'clock" is ''la daucac.'' "Eleven o'clock" is ''la
feicac.''and "twelve o'clock" is ''la gaicac.''.

For "morning" and "evening" we can then add ''lir.'' and ''lec.'',
meaning "early" and "late". So ''la mucaclir.'' is five in the
morning. 


!!!Exercise 1

What are the following times in Lojban? 


# Nine o'clock
# Eleven o'clock in the morning.
# Two in the afternoon.
# Midnight.
# 9:25
# 12:15
# 14:30
# 17:50 

If we want to give the time of an event, rather than just tell the time,
we need to fill in some more places. The second place of ''tcika'' is "state/event", so we need some way to show
that the sumti in this position is a state or an event,
and not a thing. 


''la daucac. tcika le mi klama''

does not mean "Ten o'clock is the time that I go" (or come!), but "Ten
o'clock is the time of my goer," which is meaningless. We get round
this problem with the word ''nu'', which
means&mdash;you
guessed&mdash;"state/event". This is called an "abstraction descriptor" (or
"abstractor" for short), other common descriptors being ''ka'' (quality or property), ''ni'' (amount) and so on (for a complete
list, see ''The Complete Lojban Language'', p. 269). What ''nu'' does here is allow us to put a whole ''bridi'' into
a ''sumti'' place. It's usually written together
with the article (''le'' or ''lo'') but is actually a separate word. So what we want
is


''la daucac. tcika le__nu__ mi klama''

(note that there is no ''cu'' here, since ''la daucac.'' is a
''cmene'')


If "Ten o'clock is the time that I go" sounds
backwards, there are two ways you can switch it round. One is using
''se'', which swaps the first and second places of
the ''bridi''.


''le nu mi klama cu __se__ tcika la
daucac.''

means exactly the same thing. ''se'' is
co-incidentally is pretty much the same as Spanish "se", but is actually
part of a series along with ''te, ve'' and ''xe'', which convert the first and third,
first and fourth, and first and fifth places. These aren't used so much
in sentences as ''se'', but are often used in making
''lujvo'' (compound words), as we'll see later in the course. 

Still too long
and clumsy? Get ready for more Lojban tricks. It would be really nice
if ''klama'' had a place for the time of
going/coming, but it doesn't (after all, you wouldn't really want a
__six__-place ''selbri''!).
To get round this problem of missing places, Lojban has a series of
"tags" of the class BAI. The one we want here is ''ti'u'', meaning "with time". So we can now say

''mi klama ti'u la daucac.''

So why, you may ask, didn't I just say that in the first
place? I could have done, but then you wouldn't have found out about
''nu'' and ''se''! There is
more to this lesson than meets the eye. 


!!Days and Months

The days of the week are also numbers, this time adding ''djed.'', from the ''gismu,
djedi'', meaning "day".
There is at present some disagreement about which day should be day one,
though. The original convention was to follow the Judeo-Christian
convention of taking Sunday as the first day, giving 

;Sunday:''la padjed.''
;Monday:''la redjed.''
;Tuesday:''la cidjed.''

... and so on. However, in a meeting in 1992 it was
agreed that Monday be day 1, and Sunday be either 7 (''la zedjed.'') or zero (''la
nodjed.'') according to taste. Eventually, though,
people will use whichever system they prefer until one becomes
universally accepted. This may sound chaotic, but I have gone into this
point as a good example of how in Lojban a large part of the language is
"left to usage"&mdash;meaning that ultimately the language depends on the
way people choose to use it in practice. People are also free to work
out alternative conventions for cultures which do not use a seven-day
week, possibly adding to the name to make it clear; e.g. ''la padjedjung.'' could be the first day of the Chinese
ten-day week. 


Months also use numbered ''cmene'', adding ''mast.'', so January is ''la
pamast.'' and so on. Again, since there are twelve months,
we use the extra numbers, so October is ''la
daumast.''.


!!!Exercise 2

What are these days and months in Lojban? 


# Saturday
# Thursday
# March
# August
# November
# December

Just in case you're interested, the words for seasons are:

;''vensa'':Spring
;''crisa'':Summer
;''critu'':Autumn
;''dunra'':Winter 

for full definitions of these words, see the ''gismu'' list). If the seasons where you live don't
match this pattern, then you can easily create new
words. For example, the rainy season or monsoon could be
''carvycitsi'' (from ''carvi'',
rain, and ''citsi'', season) or simply ''la carv.'' . Here are some I made up for fun to give
a better idea of the weather in the UK: 

;''la lekcarv.'':"the cold rain"&mdash;Spring
;''la mliglacarv.'':"the warm (mildly-hot) rain"&mdash;Summer
;''la bifcarv.'':"the windy rain"&mdash;Autumn
;''la duncarv.'':"the freezing rain"&mdash;Winter

Joking aside, this shows two features of word-building in
Lojban: making ''cmene'' by losing the final vowel
(which we saw in Lesson 1) and creating ''lujvo'',
or compound words. You actually need a pretty good knowledge of Lojban
to make up ''lujvo'' on the spot, but we'll learn
how to make simple ''lujvo'' later on in this
course. 


!!Dates

The ''gismu'' for dates is ''detri'': 


x{SUB()}1{SUB} is the date (day, week, month, year) of state/event
x{SUB()}2{SUB}, at location x{SUB()}3{SUB}, by calendar x{SUB()}4{SUB}

Phew! Like ''tcika'', though, most places of ''detri'' can be left out. The location is
only important if we're talking about radically different timezones, or
different planets, and the calendar is normally assumed to be the
standard Western one&mdash;if you want to use, for example, the Arabic or
Chinese calendars, you can put ''le xrabo'' or ''le jungo'' in the
fourth place (as always, context is important&mdash;in a discussion of
Islamic history we would probably assume that the Arabic calendar was
being used). 

The tricky bit is the number in x{SUB()}1{SUB}. Normally we don't
want to specify the day, week, month __and__ year! To prevent
confusion, the following conventions are used: 


# If there is only one number, it is the __day__ e.g. ''li pano'' is "the 10th". 
# If there are two numbers, they are the __day and month__ e.g. ''li pano pi'e pare'' is 10/12, or "the 10th of December". 
# If there are three numbers, they are day, month, year (__not__ month, day, year, as in the American convention) e.g. ''li repa pi'e ze pi'e pasoxaso'' is 21/7/69 - the date of the first moon landing. 

We can therefore say 

;''li repa pi'e ze pi'e pasoxaso cu detri lenu lo remna cu pamoi klama le lunra'':21/7/1969 is-the-date-of the-event a human first go (to) the moon

Here we have another case of abstraction with ''nu''. Just like articles have the terminator ''ku'' (which is usually missed out), abstractors like
''nu'' have the terminator ''kei''. ''kei'' is not necessary in
this particular sentence, because the abstraction comes at the end, but
it would be necessary if there were other places after
x{SUB()}2{SUB}&mdash;if, for example we wanted to emphasise that this was
the date in Houston (but not in Tokyo) we would say 

;''li repa pi'e ze pi'e pasoxaso cu detri lenu lo remna cu pamoi klama le lunra __kei__ la xustyn.'':21/7/1969 is-the-date-of the-event a human first go (to) the moon (according to the time at) Houston

The ''kei'' here is important, as it is necessary to
stop the ''nu'' abstraction running into ''la xustyn.'', which would make the sentence say that a
person went to the moon from Houston&mdash;true, but not what we want. By
the way, if you're wondering why ''__kei__'' wasn't necessary in the ''tcika'' example, it
was because the ''cu'' marked the next word
as the main ''selbri''. 

Just as with ''tcika'', we often want to put the event first&mdash;after
all in most languages we would normally say "My birthday is on the
fifteenth of August" rather than "The fifteenth of August is the date of
my birthday." We can manage this change by using place tags, e.g.

;''fe lenu mi jbena [kei] cu detri fa li pamupi'ebi'':the-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

but it is easier to use ''se'' like this: 

;''lenu mi jbena cu __se__ detri li pamupi'ebi '':the-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

And, as you probably guessed, there is a BAI tag for "dated": ''de'i'' (notice how BAI tags tend to be
similar to the ''selbri'' they suggest). So the
other way I can tell you my birthday is ''mi jbena de'i li
pamupi'ebi''

__Question:__ If only one number is used with
''detri'', it is the day. So how do we say what year an event
happened without giving the day and month as well? 


The ''gismu, nanca'' cannot be used instead of
''detri'', since it has the place-structure
"x{SUB()}1{SUB} is
x{SUB()}2{SUB} years in duration, by standard x{SUB()}3{SUB}," i.e. it gives the length of an
event in years, not the year when an event happened. One way out is to
use a ''cmene'' for the year, so the year I am
writing this would be ''la pasososonanc.''

!!!Exercise 3&mdash;history quiz

Give the dates to answer these questions, using ''cmene'' for the years. 


# ''lenu la kolombus. facki lo cnino gugde cu se detri ma''
# ''la mexmet. dable'a la konstantinopolis. de'i ma''
# ''lenu fraso jecyga'ibai cu se detri ma''
# ''la marks. .e la .engels. ciska le guntrusi'o selpeicku ku de'i ma''
# ''la muxamed. klama la medinas. de'i ma''__Vocabulary:__;''facki'':find, discover

;''cnino'':new
;''gugde'':country
;''dable'a'':conquer, sieze ("war-take")
;''fraso'':French
;''jecyga'ibai'':revolution ("government-change-force")
;''guntrusi'o'':Communist ("work-govern-idea")
;''selpeicku'':manifesto ("thought-book")

!!Summary

Apart from times and dates, this lesson has covered some important
points of Lojban grammar. 


* Some simple ''lujvo''.
* The descriptor for states and events, ''nu'', and its terminator, ''kei''.
* Conversion&mdash;swapping round places&mdash;with ''se''.
* The BAI tags ''ti'e'' ("with time") and ''de'i'' ("with date").

!!Answers to Exercises

!!!Exercise 1

# ''la socac.''
# ''la feicaclir.''
# ''la recaclec.''
# ''la revocac.''__or__''la gaicaclir.'' (if you follow the convention that midnight is 12 a.m.)
# ''li sopi'eremu''
# ''li parepi'epamu''
# ''li pavopi'ecino''__or__''li pavopimu''
# ''li pazepi'emuno''__or__''li pabani'upano''

!!!Exercise 2

# ''la zedjed.''
# ''la mudjed.''
# ''la cimast.''
# ''la bimast.''
# ''la feimast.''
# ''la gaimast.''

!!!Exercise 3

# ''la pavosorenanc.''
# ''la pavomucinanc.''
# ''la pazebisonanc.''
# ''la pabivobinanc.''
# ''la xarerenanc.'' (or ''la pananc.'', if you're using the Muslim calendar)
History: Lojban Tutorial: Lesson 5

Source of version: 2 (current)

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