Re: [lojban] tautologies

["Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>]

la rab cusku di'e

> Since Spanish was brought up, how about we look at it for an example?
> Based on my knowledge of Spanish (three years of state-mandated crap and
> two of actually learning it) the way they express that kind of statement
> is by explicitly making a tautology:
>
> "Cueste lo que cueste, yo lo compro."
>
> Which means something like "It costs what it costs, I buy it." I'll
> defer to Jorge if he wants to clarify.

The Spanish is quite correct. The English is lacking the subjunctive.
Maybe: "Cost it what it may cost, I buy it".

> This seems to be the kind of thing that would translate well to Lojban.

Doing subjunctive in Lojban is even harder than in English.
English at least has a remnant of one.

> Could it be something like {ko'a noi leke'a jdima cu jdima ke'a zo'u
> vecnu ri mi}?

I would do that in Spanish as:

 "Eso, que cuesta lo que cuesta, lo compro."
 "That thing, which costs what it costs, I buy it."

No subjunctive and therefore no suggestion as to what would
happen if it didn't cost what it costs.

mu'o mi'e xorxes



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