[lojban-beginners] Re: Starting stories

[Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com>]

I'm not quite sure how {ni'o ni'o ni'o} works here; I checked the CLL and it seems to more or less indicate "going off on a completely different topic altogether"...the mechanisms are actually pretty specific, but the core "meaning" seems somewhat vague. I can see how it might, but I'm not quite clear on how it fits.

I do like {puzuku} for some of these usages, though. It also has the assonance, which is kinda nice for a children's story (which is what I'm writing for simplicity's sake).

I suppose one could use both. For example (and this is what I was doing earlier when this came up) you could start the whole text by introducing some relevant characters and a little bit of information about them, beginning with {ni'o ni'o ni'o} and then essentially say "one day, such and such happened" with "one day" being translated as {puzuku}.

mu'omi'e latros.

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 7:35 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10 February 2010 23:27, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
> In English we have things like "once upon a time" or "one day" that we use
> conventionally to start stories, especially in fiction. Latin takes this one
> step further and uses just one word, "olim", which unlike the English
> version has no tense dependence; it makes sense to use olim in a story about
> the distant future. Does Lojban have anything like this, either defined this
> way (like Latin) or conventionally used this way (like English)? I've been
> hunting for a while and haven't gotten anywhere.

I suggest "puzuku", which means "at a long distance in time toward the
past". I first used it when I translated a Japanese folk tale. In
Japanese they say "mukasi mukasi", meaning "past past", plus "aru
tokoro ni", meaning "at some place", for which I like to use "bu'uku".


mu'o mi'e tijlan