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Re: [lojban-beginners] Lojban attempt: please correct

la'o me. Timothy Lawrence .me cusku di'e:

I posted my Lojban attempt on #ckule yesterday:

	.za'a lo bangu cu tolxregau ma'a.i
	.ja'o lo nu remna cu gumgau ma'a.i
	.ei ma'a cilre ma'a
I think you are confused about the function of the "." dot character/letter. Its function is *not* to start a sentence.
The dot {.} is a consonant (pronounced as a glottal stop (or pause)). It precedes words that (would otherwise) begin with a vowel, e.g. {.au}, {.arbaleta}, and also the word {.i}. 

The word {.i} is the sentence separator, not the dot.


Could someone correct it? I was trying to say the following:

	(I observe that) language separates you and me.
	(I deduce that) humanity unites you and me.
	We must learn one another.
There are a lot of possible ways to translate this depending on the exact meaning of the words. E.g. is "language" an agentive cause or separation or not? What sense of humanity is intended? Who is "we"? Etc etc. 

One option:

za'a lo bangu cu te sepli do mi
.i ja'o lo ka xendo cu te jorne do mi
.i mi'o nitcu lo ka simxu lo ka tadni
(you could also use {simxu lo ka cilre} if you really wanted; the whole text is highly metaphorical anyway, but {mi cilre do} does sound a bit odd to most Lojbanists)
If you can answer the above questions then I can do another translation. My translation was just a wild guess. 


Does "ja'o" definitely translate to "therefore"? Because I wasn't
intending on using it to link the two sentences.
It marks your sentence as a conclusion, but it doesn't have to be the conclusion of the previous sentence. 


A few more questions:

- How does one say "Does that make any sense?" in Lojban? - How does
one say "How does one say (English) in Lojban?" in Lojban?


Yet again there are many options...

{xu smudra} -- "Is [it] semantically correct?"
{xu do te smuni di'u lo cizra} -- "Do you understand the previous utterance as having a strange meaning?" 


And for the second one you can use either of the following:
{ma xe fanva zoi gy. <English> .gy lo jbobau} -- "What's the translation result of <English> into Lojban?"
{ma noi lojbo cu smudu'i zoi gy. <English> .gy [gi'e lojbo]} -- "What Lojban expression has the same meaning as <English>?"
I like the second one because it doesn't involve an agent (fanva1). The first one is the old-school way. 

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

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