[lojban-beginners] Re: An interesting sentence

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 8/20/07, turnip <turnip@bcpl.net> wrote:
> Consider the following pairs of sentences:
> Veinte nueve serpientes de Under fueron atraídas a mis ropas sucias.
> I launder moreso since.
>
>  The Spanish (and correct/forgive me if I have messed it up, Xorxes) means,
> "Under's 29 snakes were attracted to my dirty clothes".

"Under's 29 snakes" would be "Las veintinueve serpientes de Under",
because the English possesive is also always definite. "Veintinueve
serpientes de Under" would be "Twenty-nine snakes of Under's".

"Mis ropas sucias" suggests that you are wearing them. If you are
thinking of a pile of dirty clothes, then "mi ropa sucia" would be more
idiomatic, as "ropa" is then normally used as a mass noun.

> The meaning of the
> second sentence, though, depends on whether it's English or lojban

To be grammatical lojban it needs to be {la.under} though. {launder} is
a cmevla, and can't follow {.i} directly.

> (which is
> why I deliberately didn't use English for the first sentence, to avoid bias on
> interpreting the second sentence (although I did inherently bias it by using
> English-style punctuation and spacing)).  But in either case, the second
> sentence logically follows the first.

u'i

mu'o mi'e xorxes