xu do sisku lo lojbo tcana
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No.214  

I am having trouble translating certain English sentences into lojban due to my own vague understanding of certain cmavo. As an example take the following quote by William Shakespeare: "Love all, trust a few. Do harm to none."
The "all" the "few" and the "none" are what are troubleing me. The quote has a certain ambiguous nature to it that I i don't want to lose or perverse. From what I under stand "ko prami ro .i ko lacri su'o .i ko na xrani ro" wouldn't be grammatical and seems to butcher the end of the quote. Further, "ko prami le prenu" may be more except able due to the fact the all most like refers to people. I would just like any assistants on the subject that people can offer in helping to understand these certain quantifiers

>> No.215  

Things like "some", "all", "several", "none of", and even "enough", "too many", "how many", are all said using Lojban's "number" system. The "number" system is quite broad, and covers more things than numbers are used for in other languages. For instance one of the most interesting and useful numbers is "rau", which means "just the right number", enough (and not too much, either). For example: "mi ponse rau plise" -- I have just the right number of apples.

The numbers all work pretty much the same way. Numbers can't be used as sumti on their own. You can make a number into a sumti by putting "li" in front of it, but that refers to the number itself. For instance: "li ci namcu", the number three is a number. To refer to a number of something, you need something that you're saying how many of. One common solution if you don't really want to specify what thing is to use "da", a word of magical logical uses whose basic meaning is "something": "mi prami ro da", I love everything (for every thing X, I love X). "ro" should be used sparingly in this context though-- "mi prami ro da" asserts that I love not only all people, but everything of every sort (at least within some universe of discourse).

Here's a possible translation of Bill's phrase: "ko prami ro prenu .i ko lacri so'u prenu .i ko xrani no prenu"

Here's a less literal attempt: "ko ro roi prami gi'e so'u roi lacri gi'e no roi xrani" always love, rarely trust, never harm.

mu'o mi'e se ckiku

>> No.216  

minor nitpick: the x1 of xrani is the event causing the hurt, so you would want {gau ko na xrani} or {... gi'e no roi jai gau xrani}



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