zo djan. cmene mi and not la djan. cmene mi. The latter would be giving your name a name --- John, and would in effect be saying "my name is called John."
The Gotcha title is of course an allusion to the Lewis Carroll anecdote in Through the Looking Glass illustrating this:
- "Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
- "It's long," said the (Was Footnote: White) Knight, "but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it
either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else"
- "Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
- "Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddock's Eyes'."
- "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
- "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
- "Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called?'" Alice corrected herself.
- "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
- "Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
- "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting on a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
- Martin Gardner's annotations point out that the claim beginning "The song really is" is illogical, because its object is merely another name. To be consistent, the White Knight should have actually sung the song at this point.
For a Lojban translation, see http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9205/msg00026.html, with the inevitable flame from Ivan Derzhanski: http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9206/msg00012.html (eerily echoing a similar flame by pc: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/7477.)
"eerily"? Two rights make a right! Any screw-up ought to be recognized by anybody, even pros.
- Eerie because you would think that the flamers would figure it out sooner rather than later. Two wrongs make a wrong. Any untenable objection ought to be recognized by anybody, even pros.
- So you're saying the two flamers were out of line?
- I'm saying the objection is stupid. Lojban is a complete human language like any other, and if Alice can be translated into any language it can be translated into Lojban. If you don't like a certain translation project, shut up and translate something else.