[lojban-beginners] Re: how to say "learn how to swear in Lojban"

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 03:08:44PM -0500, Matt Arnold wrote:
> I'm making a promotional poster for a Lojban event at a science
> fiction convention, which I would like to be a bilingual
> English/Lojban poster. 

Sounds excellent!

Which con?

> I want to say (among other things) "learn how to swear in Lojban."

First you'd have to define "swear".  If you want insult, that's
easy, but "swear" generally means "use words that would offend the
average speaker of the language"; there is no such thing in Lojban.

> I tried {ko cilre fi lo zu'o mabla sepi'o ma bau la lojban}. Is
> {sepi'o ma} the right way to say "how"? 

It's one way, but it's not the right way in this case, IMO.  For one
thing, you want {ma kau}.  For another, I'd use {ta'i} instead of
{se pi'o}.

> Do I need to close off the abstraction at the end of the sentence
> with {kei} to avoid saying that the learning is {sepi'o ma bau la
> lojban}?

Yes.

I suggest something like:

ko cilre lo tadji be lo nu gunta cusku bau la lojban

-Robin

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