Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautologies

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 11:12:07 -0500 (EST)

[email-masked] scripsit:

> And how do we tell which is which? If {vei ny le mlatu} means "n cats" why 
> doesn't {ny le mlatu} mean "n the cats" with "n" standing standing for some 
> number rather than Nelly?

Because.

It just doesn't, that's why.

> What you have 
> said is that the letter en is a value and so.

According to *one* interpretation of quotation marks, which I hereby
disclaim.

> BTW "Mind your 'p's and 'q's" 
> is exactly about letters: the two are easily confused in many people's 
> handwriting and when use to keep tally of one's drinking of a day, errors -- 
> mistaking quarts for pints -- can be of considerable consequence. 

That's one theory of the origin of the phrase. There are about a
dozen others, all equally just-so stories with no evidence for them.

-- 
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan [email-masked]
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
--_The Hobbit_