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Re: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component



At 01:38 AM 05/13/2000 +0200, Thorild Selen wrote:
Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) writes:
> Not likely if we are talking dates. If the listener only wants the century,
 > then giving the date to any greater significance is drowning him in
 > irrelevance.

This brings up another interesting question; how should you specify
a century? In English, you usually say "the 18:th century" where a
Swede would say "the 1700:s". I admit that the second version is
somewhat ambigous, since it could possibly be intended to mean only
the years 1700-1709, but, on the other hand, the n:th century style
seems kind of off by one, and therefore causes confusion among those
who aren't used to it; also, it doesn't look a bit like how you talk
about decades in any language that I know, and to be consistent with
that style you'd possibly have to consider talking about, for example,
the 171:th decade.
Does anyone have a good suggestion for how to talk about centuries
and decades in lojban?

It just so happens ...

We thought of that one, and there is a "non-specific number" tu'o and a "typical number" no'o corresponding to sumti placeholders zo'e and zu'i. So pazetu'otu'o is the 1700s. The 18th century is of course le pabimoi ke nanca panonomei (or ctona'a).

lojbab
----
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org