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[lojban] Re: Re: [lojban-beginners] Question about {roda}



On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:46 AM, <rdentato@gmail.com> wrote:
On Feb 25, 2011 8:01am, Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:
> They seem like nearly unrelated comments, and it doesn't really make sense. I mean, you could say, "I see two mammals. Everything is a dog." but it doesn't make any more sense it English. That's not how it would be used. I actually find it useful in conversation to have {ro da poi prenu} mean literally absolutely all people. {ro lo ro prenu} seems to be nearly identical in meaning.

Well, you are the native English speaker, not me, but translating literally from Lojban to English to make your point seems unfair to me. Translating {roda} with "everything" is extremely unfair, you should have said at least "all X". "I see two animals. All are dogs" is just as valid literal translations as yours and, please, tell me that in English you see them as two unrelated sentences. In Italian, "Vedo due animali. Tutti cani." is a literal translation that is also absolutely comprehensible. I think those who know other Latin based languages have similar examples.

I made this point already. Our projection of Lojban speakers seems to be of a bunch of dumb people that cannot relate semantic elements of sentences. They are supposed to infer the right meaning of abstractions, of gismu that have extremely broad meaning, of lujvo that can be created on the spot and so on, but when they see {roda} they stop, look blindly and see two unrelated sentences not being able to relate an unbound {da} to what has already been said.

I guess I had visited another region of Lojbanistan, where people can handle at least the same level of semantic ambiguity of other natural languages and, in addition, are able to shape their thoughts in words much more precisely, as they see the need. It looked a much more interesting place to visit but your mileage may vary.

remod
 
One of the things I like most about Japanese is that it is a very context-dependent language. The reason for it being so highly contextual is because a lot of concepts tend to be horribly long things to say. Lojban has this same tendency, especially when seeking precision, and so it behooves us to shorten our bridi in the same manner.

I could say

{mi gaukla to ko'a gasnu lonu ko'e klama kei toi re gerku fu le cerni snodzu to nu masno cadzu toi .i roda poi gerku me ra pe mi ku'o cmene la.bernerd. fa'u la.djenivas.}, but that's really freaking long and takes forever for me to express and everyone else to comprehend. So, instead, I'd probably say something more like this:

{mi gaukla re gerku fu le cerni snodzu .i roda cu cmene la.bernerd. fa'u la.djenivas.}

and leave it to context to determine what makes sense for {roda poi zo'e}.


--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.a'o.e'e ko cmima le bende pe lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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