Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zoi gy. Good Morning! .gy.

From: Arnt Richard Johansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 14:52:03 +0100

>Here's my problem with this: the english phrase "Good morning!" 
>contains more meaning than just "Greetings of the a.m." In fact, it 
>is an example of a whole class of English phrases that would appear, 
>to my beginner's eyes, to be very difficult to translate accurately 
>into lojban, including such phrases as "Good 
>afternoon/day/evening/night," "Sweet dreams," "Good luck," "Merry 
>Christmas," "Gesundheit," etc.; phrases that are _very_ common in 
>everyday small talk. I don't understand the omission of a brivla 
>that would follow the form:
>
>x1 [person] bids (a) good/favorable/auspicious x2 
>[event/experience/state of being] to x3 [person] 
>
>It seems to me that such a thing would be very useful. Is there such 
>a brivla available that I'm missing, or was this an oversight, or was 
>it intentionally omitted for some reason?

I think it was either intentionally omitted or not considered very
important. After all, we *want* Lojban to be different from natural
languages -- meaning that not everything can be translated to it with the
same ease.

You could of course say things like ".a'o ko geifri le cerni" ("Enjoy the
morning!"), but this sounds very stilted. As it should be, IMHO. Lojban
should find its own phrases and expressions apart from the ones used by
natural languages.

-- 
co'o mi'e tsali