From arntrich@stud.ntnu.no Thu Nov 30 05:52:28 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: arntrich@stud.ntnu.no X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_2); 30 Nov 2000 13:52:28 -0000 Received: (qmail 65263 invoked from network); 30 Nov 2000 13:52:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 30 Nov 2000 13:52:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO flodhest.stud.ntnu.no) (129.241.56.24) by mta3 with SMTP; 30 Nov 2000 14:53:32 -0000 Received: from hff103-32 (dhcp-29170.stud.hf.ntnu.no [129.241.29.170]) by flodhest.stud.ntnu.no (8.10.0.Beta12/8.10.0.Beta12) with SMTP id eAUDqMX01553 for ; Thu, 30 Nov 2000 14:52:23 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20001130145203.01199150@pop.stud.ntnu.no> X-Sender: arntrich@pop.stud.ntnu.no X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 14:52:03 +0100 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zoi gy. Good Morning! .gy. In-Reply-To: <903bmp+9f3o@eGroups.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From: Arnt Richard Johansen >Here's my problem with this: the english phrase "Good morning!" >contains more meaning than just "Greetings of the a.m." In fact, it >is an example of a whole class of English phrases that would appear, >to my beginner's eyes, to be very difficult to translate accurately >into lojban, including such phrases as "Good >afternoon/day/evening/night," "Sweet dreams," "Good luck," "Merry >Christmas," "Gesundheit," etc.; phrases that are _very_ common in >everyday small talk. I don't understand the omission of a brivla >that would follow the form: > >x1 [person] bids (a) good/favorable/auspicious x2 >[event/experience/state of being] to x3 [person] > >It seems to me that such a thing would be very useful. Is there such >a brivla available that I'm missing, or was this an oversight, or was >it intentionally omitted for some reason? I think it was either intentionally omitted or not considered very important. After all, we *want* Lojban to be different from natural languages -- meaning that not everything can be translated to it with the same ease. You could of course say things like ".a'o ko geifri le cerni" ("Enjoy the morning!"), but this sounds very stilted. As it should be, IMHO. Lojban should find its own phrases and expressions apart from the ones used by natural languages. -- co'o mi'e tsali