From - Mon Jul 29 12:46:21 1996 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [206.241.12.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id MAA06108 for ; Fri, 26 Jul 1996 12:35:10 -0400 Message-Id: <199607261635.MAA06108@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (206.241.12.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <7.CB257447@VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM>; Fri, 26 Jul 1996 11:12:27 -0500 Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 17:11:00 PDT Reply-To: Andrew Smith Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Smith Subject: Re: may the wind.... X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1016 la bob. uais. cusku lu "As I understand Lojban, the literal translation of these aphorisms contains no more than their literal meaning, e.g., either that there should be some wind in back of a person (now what could that mean?) or that some wind should be blowing towards his back. " li'u Absolutely. We should of course translate "may the wind..." first into what it means, something like ?? "I hope always/most of the time you are helped (by something)" ?? and then into lojban .a'o roroi sidju do or .a'o so'aroi sidju do or whatever. There is a mechanism for making something figurative, by using pe'a and a closing marker which I can't remember. But this begs the important questions: 1) What does "pe'a .a'o roroi brife le do trixe" actually MEAN in lojban? 2) How can pe'a be understood by lojbo without reference to their (non-lojban) culture(s)? 3) And, underlying these two: is there any point in using or even having pe'a? co'o mi'e andruc. [adms@yco.leeds.ac.uk]