From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Mar 22 15:51:46 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:51:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DDtA2-0003UX-0F for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:51:46 -0800 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DDtA1-0003UQ-UN for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:51:45 -0800 Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:51:45 -0800 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Hello there! Message-ID: <20050322235145.GN29806@chain.digitalkingdom.org> References: <50188.193.133.140.104.1111412987.squirrel@193.133.140.104> <12d58c1605032112292bbd6a92@mail.gmail.com> <53900.62.254.128.6.1111439086.squirrel@62.254.128.6> <12d58c1605032114264d6afe93@mail.gmail.com> <48248.62.254.128.6.1111528941.squirrel@62.254.128.6> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <48248.62.254.128.6.1111528941.squirrel@62.254.128.6> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 1304 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 05:02:21PM -0500, Peter TB Brett wrote: > > coi. > > la .adam. fo le samymri cu cusku fe di'e: > > > {la'o gy. Adam COOPER .gy fo le samxa'a cu cusku fe di'e} > > Am I correct in believing that {gy} acts as a kind of quotation > mark or escape from normal Lojban? Not really. la'o means "the next word that follows acts as a delimiter for a string of non-Lojban text". Many people use gy for English text, because gy is the Lojban word for the letter g, which the Lojban word for English starts with. I myself use zoi instead, zoi being one of the two words (along with la'o) that acts like this. > If so, is there any particular reason a punctuation mark isn't > used? Because all things in Lojban must be both speakable and writable without ambiguity, hence whatever punctuation mark you pick must have an associated sound. Sooner or later someone will want to quote either the punctuation mark or the sound it makes, and then they can't use that punctuation mark to close it. The solution to this problem, which only gets worse as you think about it, is to let people pick a delimiter that doesn't occur in what they then say. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/