Subject: Re: Saying "also" or "too" in Lojban

From: SwiftRain <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 10:47:30 -0400

[email-masked] wrote:
> 
> And surely none of these mean what you presumably want to mean. So
> how would you say, "I love you too", in Lojban?

In context I would surely say lu .imidogO'i li'u. 
A more literal translation would be something like: 
lu .i si'a mi do prami li'u. 

It's not however a matter of "what is the right way to translate this
into Lojban." That is making la lojban into a code for English, which
renders it rather pointless as a language. The point of saying
something in Lojban is to think about why you say it the way you do in
English or other natural languages, & to restate the basic preconceptual
reality within the Lojbanic way of thinking. 

So think about it: Why do you feel the need to say "too" in this English
sentence? What is the basic reality which is being expressed? Do you
really need or want to say that your love is in addition to the other
person's love? My reading of the situation is that the commonsense
dialogue of 

Person A: I love you. 
Person B: I love you. 

seems somehow uncreative in English, that a word must be added to the
second speech in order to make it seem more genuine -- as if it proves
that Person B is not just a parrot. This is pure illogical English
custom, & I see nothing at all wrong with the dialogue 

.i da cusku lu "mi do prami" li'u de 
.i de cusku lu "mi do prami" li'u da 

except perhaps that I believe we should have something more interesting
than that to say to the people we love -- to my friend Heather, whom I
love very deeply, I would say 
lu 
mi ze'u gleki le nu do jmive vasxu 
li'u 

co'omi'e bret.