From swiftrain@GEOCITIES.COM Mon Aug 21 07:52:43 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 12282 invoked from network); 21 Aug 2000 14:52:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 21 Aug 2000 14:52:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chmls06.mediaone.net) (24.147.1.144) by mta1 with SMTP; 21 Aug 2000 14:52:39 -0000 Received: from geocities.com (h00207801f6bc.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.18.135]) by chmls06.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA29220 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 10:52:34 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <39A14102.AD325C92@geocities.com> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 10:47:30 -0400 Organization: love X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: Saying "also" or "too" in Lojban References: <966852152.11965@egroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: SwiftRain zon9@hotmail.com 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.