[lojban-beginners] "This land is your land..."

["David Cortesi" <davecortesi@gmail.com>]

In translation, the simplest things turn into deep philosophical puzzles...

Having spent a whole 40 minutes on it and not got past the first phrase, I would like to present the Woodie Guthrie song

(c.f.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Land_Is_Your_Land  )

as a cooperative translation project for this beginner's list. (I did a search and don't see it at lojban.org)

Me, I got stuck on the first two words...

Literal: {lo vi tergugde} (and not sure about whether it should be {lo vi...} or {vi lo...} or ...

Sloppy poetic: {le vi cesde'u}

Let's go with the literal. Obeying the stricture to avoid {du} for "is",

{ lo vi tergugde cu mintu ...} now, what is "your land"? 

"land" can be repeated in English because it's one syllable; one wouldn't want to repeat so many Lojban syllables in the same line. This calls for a pro-sumti, maybe {ri pe do}. Or would {ri pe ko} be grammatical? It gives an interesting emphasis that English couldn't say...

{ri} couldn't be used for "land" again in line 4 -- but maybe the sumti be repeated in full there.

Well, you get the idea. There are seven, 4-line verses given at the above link.  No rush. I'd like to see people do just a line or two, and explain the thought process as they go.