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''—"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)—what we are saying is "4:-5". For "half past four" you can also use ''pi'' and say ''li vo pimu''—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—you guessed—"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"—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"—Spring ;''la mliglacarv.'':"the warm (mildly-hot) rain"—Summer ;''la bifcarv.'':"the windy rain"—Autumn ;''la duncarv.'':"the freezing rain"—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—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—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}—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—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—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—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—swapping round places—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)