Re: [lojban] Phrases that translate as phrases

[Pierre Abbat <phma@webjockey.net>]

On Tuesday 27 August 2002 16:28, Avital Oliver wrote:
> IMHO any tanru is not glossable. If "sumti tcita" is normally used to speak
> of a specific
> grammatical usage, that does not make it translatable into "modal" or
> anything of the sort.

The jvoste has tanru, so there should be a way to enter them. "Spanish moss" 
is an idiom, and if you translate it literally into Lojban you won't get the 
idiomatic meaning - you'll get something growing in Spain.

Some Lojban words translate into other languages as distinct meanings. For 
instance, {mlisnosli}, which is glossed as baritone, can also refer to a 
range of radio frequencies. This can be disambiguated by using the slowness 
standard as the x3 place. (What is the x2 place for?)

phma