Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 22:10:03 -0400

de'i li 2001:9:14 : 21:33:18 veti'u la EDT la pycyn pu cusku di'e
> <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.>
> 
> Well, in the ccyymmdd version, how do you refer to an event happening on a 
> certain day? Presumably the same trick, whichever of the several available 
> you like, will work for the year in the ddmmccyy version. Take your pick, 
> even use {la PAdjed}, if you want (though I agree that that is inelegant). 
> And the whole point is that we are much more likely to want to talk about a 
> day in this month than a year all by itself, so we make the more common one 
> easier to say.

First, I disagree that referring to a day of the month without any other
information is more common. People do talk about the past, and if they're
referring to an upcoming date they're far more likely to use days of the week
(saying 'a week from Monday' or something if necessary) because days of the
week are easier to keep track of.

You can refer to a day in YYMMDD with {no'o pi'e no'o pi'e paci}, or just
{pi'epi'e paci}. Referring to a whole year in DDMMYY is different - if you're
talking about the year as a whole, you can't even say that DD and MM have
typical values. They have *all* values. Perhaps if you stretch it this would be
{tu'o}.

In the thread (I believe in 1999 or early 2000) where the dates came up, it was
established that YYMMDD is much more conducive to date arithmetic. Those who
wanted DDMMYY argued that date arithmetic isn't relevant.
-- 
la rab.spir
noi sarji zo gumri