[lojban-beginners] Re: bridi into a cmene

["Adam D. Lopresto" <adam@pubcrawler.org>]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Isen hand wrote:

> Can I turn a bridi into a cmene?  What I would like to do is take a name, in
> this case “Puerto Rican Independence Party” , and make that a name in
> lojban.  I can make a bridi out of that:
>
>
> .i le jecta sutra cu sarji le zifre pe le rifgregu’e

To me, "Puerto Rican Independence Party" doesn't feel like a bridi (a
predicate), it feels like a sumti (a noun).  Your translation ends up
something like "The governmental speedster supports free things associated
with Puerto Rico".

In general, there are two kinds of names in Lojban, which some of the
learning materials confusingly conflate (calling everything cmene).  The kind
you seem to be familiar with are {cmevla}, which always end in vowels (and
have a few other constraints).  Those can be handy, but it's important to
realize that they're arbitrary, and don't mean anything.

On the other hand, it's perfect possible to use a bridi-tail as a cmene.
Examples given in the book include things like {la cribe} for a person named
"bear".  That's the approach I would use for something like this.

la sarji be lo ka la rifgregu'e cu zifre

Now, what if we wanted to translate a name that really is a bridi, like
"Elephants Dream" (lo xanto cu senva).  I'd probably use an abstraction of
some sort,

la su'u lo xanto cu senva


> Would this work:
>
> la jectas sutras cu sarjis le zifres pe le rifgregug ?

No.  For one thing, you're trying to use cmevla, which probably isn't the
right thing here.  But you're also mixing in cmavo ({cu}, {le}, etc), and
don't do that.
--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a
coffin.  --H.L. Mencken