Continuing on, I find that I'm not too sure about identifying amounts. I'm also not quite sure what to do with "them" in the second sentence. It seems like it falls into context again.
Bird says
You have lost your toys. You have lost them all.
.i do zvajuncri lo do keldai .i do zvajuncri ro da
And I had also forgotten the title of the book, or I would have remembered that not everything is tangible that he looses. I am assuming that this is where I would need cirko and not zvajuncri. But then again, they treat it as a physical thing in the book. The Mouse finds it later in the park, and is using it.
"Oh Puppy," says Bird. "You have lost your bark!"
lu .ue doi la cityge'u - sei la cipni cu cusku - do cirko lo ka do gercmo li'u
That is it for my questions today. I'm trying to keep it to just a few questions at a time so that I don't get too far ahead of myself. It also gives me time to sit and ponder before I ask something silly.
Thanks in advance for any help given. I really do appreciate it.
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 1:45:43 PM UTC-4, la .xabltos. wrote:
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 12:21:22 PM UTC-4, selpa'i wrote:la .xabyltos. cu cusku di'e
> Thank you again. I'm really beginning to think that this will be much
> more rewarding than just copying some of the shorter texts and sorting
> through it. This will really make me think about what I want to say and
> how I need to say it.
From experience I know that few things will expose one's gaps quicker
than trying to translate something challenging into Lojban. I strongly
recommend it.
> My next question is simple, I believe, and touches upon something said
> previously.
>
> He has lost his ball.
> .i ko'a pu cirko lo ko'a bolci
>
> or
>
> .i ko'a pu cirko lo bolci
>
> While talking about "his bark" yesterday, it was noted that ke'a was not
> really needed due to context. Is it the same here? Would I need ko'a
> when talking about "his" ball?
Well, with the {ko'a} it means "his ball", and without it it means
"ball". You can leave it out when it's obvious, but it may often not be.
But maybe your questions arises from the whole {cirko} issue, where in
my translation the {ke'a} disappeared due to {cirko lo ka gercmo}. I'll
talk about this more below.
> Another question deals with a ... I guess you would call it a split
> quote (and actually the same question from above).
>
> "Little Puppy," said Bird. "You have lost your ball."
>
> .i lu doi la cmalu cityge'u li'u se cusku la cipni .i lu do pu cirko lo
> do bolci li'u
>
> Is this proper? Do I have to mark Bird as saying the second sentence,
> or is that understood from context? If it does need marked, to I do it
> at the beginning or the end of the sentence, or would that be a matter
> of preference?
It is proper. It's also totally fine to have something after {.i} that
isn't a complete sentence, like a sumti for instance. Context takes care
of who said it, just like in English.
Another very common method of doing split quotes that is used in large
works such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz is to use {sei}
like so:
.i «lu doi la cmalu cityge'u —sei la cipni cu cusku— do pu cirko lo do
bolci li'u»
(The em dashes are used to make the inserted material more readily
discernible. This is optional.)
With this method the whole quote remains in one piece.
I had actually seen that in one of the stories that I copied and thought, "I have to remember this." Actually using it, it should stay in my head better.
> One last question from la selpa'i post. He used the word zvajuko, (
> ... te'a zvajuko lo keldai ) but I not quite sure what it means. I know
> that zva is a rafsi form of zvati, but I haven't been able to figure out
> quite what juko would refer to.
It's the zi'evla version of {zvajuncri}. See
http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/dict/addvalsi.html?valsi=zvajuko
As mentioned earlier, I understand {cirko}'s x2 to always be a property
abstraction, and saying {cirko lo keldai} is either non-sense or
implicit sumti-raising (or sloppy speech). In Lojban, losing a toy is
not the same thing as losing one's patience. English conflates these
different senses of "lose" into a single word, but Lojban tries to avoid
such conflations. Using {cirko} for both senses (and all the other
senses of "lose") would only import the polysemy of English into Lojban.
Therefore I use {zvajuko} (a contraction from "ZVAti dJUno cirKO") for
the sense of "losing the property of knowing where something is".
This is part of what I like about Lojban. I'm just not used to thinking in this manner. That and a lack of vocabulary. So, I shouldn't be using cirko in this translation (as everything that he loses is a tangible object), and should use zvajuncri instead.
I think that this separation of physical/non-physical may be a harder concept to beat into my head than some others. That and using an abstract. I think that might be my bigger hangup as it is not something that I generally consider in English.
Thank you again for your time, knowledge and patience. I really appreciate it.
mi'e la selpa'i mu'o