From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Apr 03 08:31:19 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:31:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1JhRPK-0005hF-Fi for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:31:18 -0700 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.242]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1JhRPD-0005gy-9W for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:31:17 -0700 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id b21so1020149ana.61 for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:31:02 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; bh=4ufpPSUgXU16BWzbhN70lgIyvoD8csaEl8up61CyFt4=; b=pebOI5+955zn5tIZRn6/3oUW+i31w5RGcQD4ZZ2lk4f8SgeN97d9bPntfGOmE7gCt0UP5DNLUu8bNfTmrxvZ7KODSJzrOTpAqGyRXC5eHs6JVZqPnh+t/pcEjah/7H30xJumrGbRgu2fllzxDU236Y9CG391RHr2FyHmWhg/zVo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=baaLnp7l4DoH0h8lGfBVb9iBYjkJ7uUwLlHhyb3vQtJGEv993DZkTMgXLHiL76+J7flwpRlK6qlZCTgYkjZ/4PgKpUtzP6/9OpTF2acIQDYvRQ0ve0FQDXQWXrIGaLx8LMG6ONkNz39UMxEI1O5D6Gd6JttHf+HqCtHzkcrgfQc= Received: by 10.100.164.10 with SMTP id m10mr26346743ane.14.1207236661984; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:31:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.100.134.11 with HTTP; Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:31:01 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:31:01 -0700 From: "David Cortesi" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] "You better!" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 453 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: davecortesi@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners The song "You Better You Bet" by the Who came on the radio the other night, with its repeated lyric I say I love you, You say "You better!" I say I need you, You scream "You better!" &etc.etc. -- and this got me thinking about the vagaries of English grammer. "You better" is a double elision; Pete Townshend has dropped the 'd from the contraction "You'd better" but even the uncontracted "You had better" doesn't really parse. Only when fully expanded to "You had better do so" is it grammatical; yet the terse idiom "You better" (or "Yoo bettahh!" as Pete sings it) is quite understandable. So then: lojban equivalent? It's an imperative, {ko} will be involved. It refers to the prior utterance, {la'edi'u} is coming. "You'd better" is related to "You would be well-advised." That latter seems much easier to translate using {xamgu} or more the more specific {vrude} to modify {stidi} or {gidva}; and this seems a perfect spot for a little internal logic: {vrude jo gidva} as the core of "well-advised" (virtuously iff guided-by?). Hence, "You'd be well-advised to do so" might be {ko vrude jo gidva la'edi'u} ? I wonder how many errors I made in that... Which doesn't leave me, at least, any closer to the pungency of "You bettah!" Maybe some idioms can't be translated at all, let alone tersely.