Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 16:58:38

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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