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Re: [lojban-beginners] Trying my first translation ... a few questions.

la .xabyltos. cu cusku di'e

So now I am trying to translate an "early reader" book to Lojban.  I
have noticed that it really requires you to understand and think about
the grammar of the sentence more than I would normally do.  I am hoping
that this is a learned thing, and that it will be come easier as time
passes, as I think it was tripping me up initially.

So, the name of the book is "The Puppy Who Lost his Bark".   Initially,
I thought that I needed to use "lost" as my selbri, and build the rest
of the sentence around that.  What I got was

lo cityge'u ma cu cirko le ri gercmo

Which I really knew was not right.  "ma" is completely out of place and
doesn't fit into the sentence structure.  Then it dawned on me that I
was dealing with a relative clause, and I think I got it right the
second time around.

lo cityge'u poi ma kau cirko le ke'a gercmo


You would just use {ke'a} instead of {ma kau} here.

Secondly, I'd use {la} because the whole thing seems to be a name.
Lastly, {le ke'a gercmo} doesn't mean "his bark" but "his barker" ("the thing associated with him that barks"). 

So I'd say something like:

{la cityge'u poi ke'a cirko lo ka gercmo}.

I always use cirko2 as a property.


I then move on into the book.  "Little Puppy likes to play, but loses
toys every day."

.i lo cmalu cityge'u goi ko'a cu nelci le nu kelci ku ku'i ri cirko le
zilkei ti'u le ro djedi

My question here (outside of hoping that I got it right), is "zilkei".
I understand it as a lujvo (zi'o kelci).  What I don't understand is why
that would be chosen over something like selkei (se kelci).  Can anyone
explain this choice?
I find most zil- lujvo quite ugly. I wouldn't use {zilkei}, but I wouldn't usually use {selkei} in this situation either (and why not just use {se kelci} anyway?).
For "toy" I actually use {keldai} "plaything", while {kelci}'s x2 is much more broad and can include things like "playing catch", which isn't a toy at all, which is why I don't use {selkei} here. (another reason is that using {selkei} implies that someone is actually playing with it) 

I would say something like:
{.i la cmalu cityge'u cu nelci lo nu kelci kei gi'e ku'i ta'e zvajuko lo keldai} 

(or {... gi'e ku'i zvajuko lo keldai ca ro djedi})
You definitely need a {gi'e} in your sentence because otherwise you just have two sentences side by side, which is ungrammatical (your sentence has two selbri, for example). {ku'i} by itself does not start a new sentence, because it's grammatically identical to an attitudinal like {ui}. 

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

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