Subject: Re: hardly

From: "A.W.T." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 18:58:40 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@h...> wrote:
> 
> la aulun cusku di'e
> 
> >I'd like to express "hardly/scarcely in Lojban.
> 
> I have been using {ja'aru'e} for this, and {naru'e} for "almost".

I never could much appreciate the need/help of {ru'e}, as an
attitudinal-emotional, in compounds with a bridi affirmer or
negation. 

> >Thought of something around PAPA:
> >the opposite of {piso'a} - in English given as "almost the whole
of" - is 
> >{piso'u} - "a tiny part of"
> 
> In what context do you want to use this? I don't see how a
> quantifier helps as an adverb.

The context I have been pondering on "hardly" was the following
little poem (our chancellor on his visit to China was confronted 
with when a student of Bei Da quoted it in German):

.i smaji ga'u ro cmana
.i ne'i ro ricycpana
caku seltirna
fa ji'ino nunva'u
.i lei ricyne'i cmacipni
puzaku de'a grisa'a
.i doido'u ko denpa le li'i
ji'a do bazi sipna .i ba'a

(Maybe I'll add some other versions in Chinese and English soon.)

I tried to use {ji'ino} here (although referring to {no}, it doesn't
seem to be "almost nothing" rather than something like +/- zero 
i.e. also covering negative values which isn't appropriate for normal
speech).

Will still have to think about it. Quantifiers can go with sumti (I
hardly can see a house/I can see almost no house. I can hardly see/I 
can see next to nothing); but what's with selbri? (I could hardly
sleep -> I had almost no sleep; this trick isn't always at hand).

mu'omi'e .aulun.