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Re: [lojban-beginners] Frequency of {lo} and {le}
la mudri cu cusku di'e
Please don't groan about what must be another xorlo question.
These questions won't stop being asked if we groan. :) (and until some
additional clarifications are put on the gadri page)
I was reading http://www.lojban.org/tiki/How+to+use+xorlo again, and
came across these two sentences: “In my post-xorlo writings, lo
outnumbers le by about three to one (at a guess). I only use le when I'm
talking about a specific item.”.
Some people commonly use {lo} when translating the English article "a",
for example when a new object is introduced to the discourse or for
generic uses, and they use {le} anytime they refer back to something or
translate "the".
However, this is not how everyone does it.
In my writings, for example, {lo} outnumbers {le} by.. I'd say...
infinity. That is, you won't find a single {le} in my Lojban. It's a
question of ideolect.
(Btw, did you also read the "official" page on gadri?
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+gadri )
I would assume that
specific objects are talked about as frequently, if not more so, than
generic descriptions. At least on Twitter, where most of my writing
practice happens, this seems to be the case.
It makes me wonder whether I have misunderstood. Can you either reassure
me or point out where I am misunderstanding?
The most important thing you're probably missing is that even though
{lo} is a generic article, using it when having something specific in
mind is not wrong or unusual.
Imagine for example "The game was fun"; sure, you might have a specific
game in mind, the one you went to with your friends earlier that day for
instance. In Lojban, you can say:
le nunkei pu zdile
The game was fun.
However, you can also say:
lo nunkei pu zdile
Which you shouldn't translate mechanically as "a game was fun" or "games
are fun" and then be weirded out by (although both are possible meanings
depending on context), but rather as "Game was fun". It's a true
statement. If a specific game was fun, then some game was fun. What game
you're talking about is left to context, but I think your friends would
know that you're talking about the game from earlier that day. Thus,
when translating this into correct English, it does become "*The* game
was fun." even though you used {lo}.
In general, the frequency of {le} has been decreasing a lot over the
recent years, while {lo} is by far the most common article of them all now.
Feel free to ask follow-up questions.
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
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