[lojban-beginners] Re: Tao Te Ching

[Alexander <alxndr@gmail.com>]

> Chinese (especially Classical Chinese) doesn't have a
> very strict
> distinction between parts of speech. As far as I
> remember, using "dao"
> to mean "go" or "travel" (as well as the more common
> translation, "speak
> of") was pretty common in Chinese of that era (the
> ideogram shows a
> person on a road). Even now, as Alan Watts points out,
> the last three
> characters of that line ("fei chang dao") are used in
> signs to mean
> "emergency exit" (in Classical Chinese, "fei chang"
> would be parsed as
> two words - "not eternal/permanent" - whereas now they
> are read as one
> word, "feichang" - "extreme").
> 
> The most literal translation of "dao ke dao fei chang
> dao" would
> probably be "The way that can be travelled is not the
> eternal way."
> Dao/Tao has elements of "litru", "pluta", "tadji" and
> "pruce".
> 
> robin.tr

I bow to your knowledge of both classical Chinese and TTC
translations... I knew it was something like this, but i didn't have
much in the way of details. Thanks.

-- 
GnuPG Public Key: http://maltp.com/pubkey-gmail.asc