At 04:33 PM 9/14/01 -0700, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
>In day-month-year, how do you refer to an event happening during a certain
>year? It seems you don't. The lessons avoid this by naming years. So this
>year is {la renonopananc.} and the next year is {la renonorenanc.} and the
>next year is {la djimbab.}, or might as well be, because cmene are not
>analyzable.
Conversely, of course, in YY-MM-DD, how do you refer to a date? ("This
happened on the 24th.") The answer is tu'o, right? Or indeed, even no
number at all. So:
This happened on the 24th. This happened in 1971.
YY-MM-DD. fasnu de'i li pi'e pi'e 24 fasnu de'i li 1971
DD-MM-YY. dasnu de'i li 24 fasnu de'i li pi'e pi'e 1971
... and it's already obvious which one would be more useful, I think.
Woah. In fact, I think {de'i li 1971} is such a big win, and {de'i li pi'e
pi'e 24} is so clean, that I'm prepared to opine here, as with {ka}, that
the existing convention is broken, long live the new convention.
Except that, since it IS a change to the baseline (given the written place structure of detri), and cannot be claimed to be an "error", since we knew about the standards when we last went around on the issue before the baseline, you will force us to adopt a procedure for a formal change to the baseline, something I have been strongly avoiding because if we have such, we probably won't have a baseline because lots more changes will be proposed that I have staved off by arguing "baseline".
Now maybe we shouldn't be hamstrung by the baseline if enough people want a change, but part of the reason for having a baseline is to hamstring those who would change by fiat. (If you evolve a change through usage, of course, I cannot argue with you).
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