An excellent first letter (very long)

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

Coranth D'Gryphon sent me an excellent beginning writing effort, which I
will share with all of you since it brings out some neat points.  I'm
sure Coranth's ego will stand public correction, and all-in-all he did
an outstanding effort even if I've commented it to death.  I note that
several of the rest of you seem to be at about the same skill level.  I
suggest that beginning people write to each other in Lojban, preferably
with English translation in a follow-up message (Ivan Derzhanski and
Nick Nicholas are already doing so, WITHOUT the English and apparently
are communicating - the first international Lojban conversation after a
fashion.)  There is NO BETTER WAY to learn the language than to see how
others misunderstand your attempts to express in the language.  And if
communication actually occurs, you've achieved the purpose of language,
which is more important than being correct.  If you can figure out most
of what Coranth was TRYING to say on the following (there are errors and
even typo-nonexistent words that can make some parts virtually
impossible to a novice), you are ready.

Since Coranth, Bob Chassell, and Ivan (and a few others perhaps) are
actively studying the language now, and all live in the Boston area, I
suspect that you might be able to progress faster by establishing
non-computer contact.  Who knows, you might find yourself with an
occasional, or preferably regular Lojban conversation/discussion group
like we've started here in DC.  There are also a few others without net
access who could get involved if that occurs.  So if any of you are
interested, post something to the list and see if things jell.  (I can
supply a set of Boston-area addresses and some phone numbers if someone
wants to actually organize this, or we can send out a mailing from
here.)

(Note:  A Lojban conversation group does NOT necessarily mean that you
fry your brain for two hours trying to talk in Lojban.  We are doing
much shorter periods of time, and spending time in between talking about
grammar points and things that may need better explanation in the
teaching materials, etc.)

Here is Coranth's orginal text and translation.  My comments follow.
_______________________________________________________________________

coi doi lojbab.

le lojbo ckule cu xamgu
.i di'u cu pluka mi
.i re le ci tardi cu djica troci le nu la lojban cu se djuno
.i ji'a
.i'ou'anai mi pu skami ciska piso'i le ti fasnu tebe'i do
.i mi'u pu fonxa tavla

.i la lojbo gerna cu frili mi
.i le lojbo valsi na go'i

.i mi cu troci le nu la'edi'u cu se djuno
.i .ava'o mi baze'e djuno roru

.i paupei la logflac. cu kakne le sidju
di'e .inaja jei di'u
.i pe'ue'o ko cu tavla mi le pu'u cpacu ko'a

.i ju'e ki'e co'o lojbab.

                                        la korant.


hi bob

the lojban-school is good
this pleases me
2 of the 3 students desire-ingly try-to-attain the-state-of lojban being-known

I regret/sorrow-at I have-before not computer-written much-of these events
        to-you

ditto have-before not telephone-talked

lojban grammer is easy for me
the-set-of lojban words is not

I try-to-attain the-state-of them-previous being-known
I hope-desire-that I will-after-some-time know them-all

question-opinion : Logflash is-able-to help

the-following only-if the-previous-sentence is-true:
request-please : you (imper) talk-to me about the-process-of getting them

I conclude. thanx. bye.

                                                Coranth
_________________________________________________________________

>coi doi lojbab.
>hi bob
>
>le lojbo ckule cu xamgu
>the lojban-school is good

Both excellent.


>.i di'u cu pluka mi
>this pleases me

You translated the Lojban to English correctly, but the English is
ambiguous.  A more exact English translation of your sentence is:

"The last sentence pleases me."

Now you have a right to be pleased about the last sentence:  it was well
done.  But I suspect that you were trying to express that the state of
affairs described by the last sentence is what pleased you, in which
case you wanted to say:

.i la'edi'u [cu] pluka mi.

It is probably useful to memorize "la'edi'u" as a single word; you will
use it in an English translation far more often than "di'u" alone, unles
you are writing essays about language.


>.i re le ci tardi cu djica troci le nu la lojban cu se djuno
>2 of the 3 students desire-ingly try-to-attain the-state-of lojban being-known

Except "tadni" for "tardi", excellent.  I explicitly check or have Nora
check all of my writings before sending them out to make sure I don't
make word mistakes.  Until you master the vocabulary, you should do so
whenever possible.  Of course, though, I would rather you write Lojban
without checking the words than not write Lojban at all.


>.i ji'a
>.i'ou'anai mi pu skami ciska piso'i le ti fasnu tebe'i do
>I regret/sorrow-at I have-before not computer-written much-of these events
>        to-you

A great teaching sentence.  It was grammatical and I understood what you
intended, but you made lots of little errors.

You left out translating the "additionally", and I'm not sure how it
applies; if you are trying to non-specifically link this sentence to the
previous one ".ije" is a logical joining, and ".i" is the simple "run-on
sentence 'and'.

The attitudinal "appreciation+loss" does not convey to me your English -
what did you 'lose'; it sounds like the type of emotion one might feel
when a trusted and valued employee left the company, or maybe what you
might say in a letter of resignation.  Possibilities are the simple
".u'u", or ".i'anaise'i" (or attaching the ".i'anai" differently:  "mi
.i'anai pu ..." which means roughly (I, damn me, previously ...)

Your English sentence is a negation - you have NOT PREVIOUSLY written
much-of these events, but this negation is not in the sentence.  You
could do so with na, but I would prefer the more exact "punai".

"ciska" is "inscribe"; you did at least note that its place structure
wasn't that useful and used "tebe'i".  "cusku" is usually more
applicable; writing is just a medium (that could go in the "ve cusku"
place if it was important).  "tavla" is also useful here; it is not
limited to verbal expression (which is "bacru"), and it has a talkee
too.  Finally, as implied by your "te be'i", you could have used "benji"
with "le datni/se skicu be le fasnu" or more simply "le fasnu datni".

"piso'i" is a fraction of a whole.  If you are treating the events as
separate reportable instances, you wanted "so'i le fasnu" = "many of the
events".  If you wanted to talk about them as a mass, you wanted "piso'i
lei fasnu" = much of the mass of events.  Probably the latter is better.

"ti" as a demonstrative does not work well in letters, and in any case I
doubt if you could point to the "ti" that 'possesses' the events.  "ti"
is a sumti and in that position "le ti fasnu" it meant "this thing's
event(s)".  For "this" in such a sumti you >usually< want the locator
"vi":  (le vi fasnu = the here event).  Now it turns out that a
different possessive might actually have been appropriate here:  "le
de'u fasnu" = the earlier sentence's events, or possibly, "le ra fasnu"
which in your writing can only refer to the lojban class = "the
lojban-class's events".  Of course, "ra" alone might have been clear
since you would have been writing about the class as well as the events
associated with the class.

Adding all these comments together, I might have written the sentence
as:

.ije mi .i'anai punai .uu skami cusku ra do


>.i mi'u pu fonxa tavla
>ditto have-before not telephone-talked

Again missing the negation, only it is more blatant here.  You said that
we HAVE talked.

You don't say what we haven't talked about.  Since we HAVE telephone
talked before, you are putting a lot of semantic load on that "mi'u" to
convey that you want me to transfer the subject of talking from the
previous sentence (as well as the other places).

My attempt (and I like "je" or "ji'a" here instead of "mi'u" though it
seems as interesting concept to use a "ditto" discursive to copy the
sumti from the previous sentence, while changing the selbri.  Hmmm.
Still "je", with no discursive, linking a specified sumti bridi with an
observative, strongly suggests the sumti copying.  I do this a lot,
myself, according to Nora.  There are also more obvious compound
sentence using "gi'e", but I won't go into that here.):

.ije punai fonxa tavla  / .ije punai fonxa tavla do ra

(You could have combined the two sentences into one, of course:

.ije mi .i'anai punai .uu skami ja fonxa cusku ra do


>.i la lojbo gerna cu frili mi
>lojban grammer is easy for me
>.i le lojbo valsi na go'i
>the-set-of lojban words is not

You are correct that "na" does not require "cu".  Excellent.


>.i mi cu troci le nu la'edi'u cu se djuno
>I try-to-attain the-state-of them-previous being-known

"la'edi'u" here makes your sentence mean:

I try-to-attain the-state-of
(the-set-of lojban words is not [easy for me]) being-known.

You wanted "ri":  (.i le lojbo valsi na go'i .i mi troci lenu ri cu se djuno).


>.i .au.a'o mi baze'e djuno roru
>I hope-desire-that I will-after-some-time know them-all

I corrected what I presume to be a typo ".ava'o".

You wanted "ze'eba" instead of "baze'e", which means here "I will for
some interval in the future know all of them."  Examine the parallel
examples in "tense*" in the cmavo lexeme list, which are based on "pu".
"ra" is more correct than "ru" here since counting backwards in your
version "ri" is "la'edi'u" and "ra" is "le lojbo valsi".  In my
rewritten versions, "ri" is still "le lojbo valsi".


>.i paupei la logflac. cu kakne le sidju di'e .inaja jei di'u
>question-opinion : Logflash is-able-to help
>the-following only-if the-previous-sentence is-true:

This one is fun.  I had to write most of the following before I knew
what you were trying.

"paupei" isn't wrong but the "pau" is superfluous.  "pau" is used to let
the listener reader know that a question is coming up >later< in the
sentence that might not be expected, forewarning that attention is
needed so that the answer can be provided.  When the question is the
next word, the warning is redundant, but not wrong.  I think that your
desired question was probably ".iapei" or "pe'ipei".

I'm sure you wanted "le nu sidju di'e".  Otherwise "le sidju" (the
helper) is the x2 place of "kakne" and "di'e" is the x3 place.  But as
for what it means:

Your second sentence isn't grammatical; you may have wanted "di'u jetnu"
based on your English.  But more pressing is that you have one awesome
self-referential sentence loop here, and I can't honestly say I
understand the English any better than the Lojban.  It's often a good
idea to put a colloquial English translation along with a literal one if
the structure is convoluted as in this case.

I'll rephrase your English to make what you said (omitting the question
and correcting the grammar as already noted).

.i la logflac. cu kakne lenu sidju di'e .inaja di'u jetnu
Logflash is able at helping the following sentence.  [Only if] the previous
sentence is true.

Does this make the problem clearer?  You have a logical connective that
makes some funky claims about the truth conditions of the combined pair
of sentences.  (I think, given the metalinguistic content, that the
".inaja" becomes equivalent to ".ije", but I'm not sure.  By a different
analysis, you get a tautology of a sort.  If the first is true the
second must be; if the first is false, so is the second.)  Then the
second sentence is talking about the truth of the first sentence, while
the first sentence is talking about Logflash helping with the second
sentence.  [Sounds of mental explosion as circuits are fried
.oicairo'e].

.ua.ue ki'anai
I think I figured out now what you were trying to do (but only after all
that analysis.  My clue is how you grouped your English with a line
separating:

>question-opinion : Logflash is-able-to help
>
>the-following only-if the-previous-sentence is-true:
>request-please : you (imper) talk-to me about the-process-of getting them

This makes it clear that "di'e" is not supposed to be part of the 1st
sentence, but rather is the 'beginning' of the 2nd.  At which point all
becomes clear:

".i" is an almost perfect sentence terminator.  It says that the
following sentence is about to start, making all of the 'elidable'
terminators of constructs shorter than sentence scope (i.e.  "vau",
"kei", "ku", etc.) actually elidable at the end of a sentence.  BUT the
".i" can ONLY go between sentences.  You apparently intended the "di'e"
as part of the second sentence, and in effect were trying to use
".inaja" as the selbri.  But the "di'e" is irrevocably part of the 1st
sentence in this case, and I merely spent my effort trying to figure out
how it fit in (which pointed out the need for "lenu sidju" vs.  "le
sidju" - which I still think is what you wanted, though I might have
missed it if not for the hanging "di'e").

At which point I can say GOOD TRY, especially since we nowhere cover
logical connectives in text materials.  BUT:

The members of "GOhA", "me"+"KOhA", and PA+MOI, are the only cmavo or
cmavo compounds that come to mind as being valid as a selbri (there may
be some complex equivalents of these, too.  Lojban logical connectives
connect constructs; they are not in themselves predicates.  If you want
a predicated connective, you need a gismu or tanru.  We have provided
"kanxe", "vlina", "dunli" and "nibli", and I think the latter is what
you want here:

.i la logflac. cu kakne lenu sidju .i di'e nibli di'u

(Nora would stop here; she likes short simple sentences, but I'll muck
things up a little more:)  At which point we can actually eliminate the
2nd sentence entirely, using a causal connective:

.i .iapei la logflac. cu kakne lenu sidju
.iseni'ibo pe'ue'o ko cu tavla mi le pu'u cpacu ko'a

which translates as:
>question-opinion : Logflash is-able-to help
>Necessitating therefore:  request-please :  you (imper) talk-to me
       about the-process-of getting them

It is even possible to compress this to the single sentence (in which
case the "pau" is useful, too):

.i pau la logflac. cu kakne lenu sidju .iapei kei seni'i lenu pe'ue'o ko cu
tavla mi le pu'u cpacu ko'a

>question follows:  Logflash is-able to help (your opinion please),
which (the ability) would necessitate therefore (I request-please) that
you (imper) talk-to me about the-process-of getting them

Note the "kei" to terminate the lenu clause.  Without it, the sentence means,
the only roughly similar:

>question follows:  Logflash is-able at {helping (your opinion please)
thus necessitating therefore (I request-please) that you (imper) talk-to
me about the-process-of getting them}

There is no problem asking a Lojban question about a sentence while
exploring the logical consequences of its truth.  Logically speaking,
the truth value of a question is the same as that of the sentence with
the question satisfied (the blank filled in, etc.)  Thus you can ask my
opinion on the first sentence, while telling me what to do if it is
true.  Note that you have to move the ".iapei" question itself around
when you try to ask it all in one sentence, so that I know you are
asking about Logflash's ability to help, and not whether (its ability to
help necessitates talking about getting it).


>.i pe'ue'o ko cu tavla mi le pu'u cpacu ko'a
>request-please : you (imper) talk-to me about the-process-of getting them

An excellent non-trivial concluding sentence, with only one minor flaw.
"pe'u" is a vocative member of COI, and expects a name or description
afterwards - you can't quite use it like an attitudinal, unless you
close it with "do'u".  Without the do'u, the vocative absorbs "ko" as
the target of "pe'u", and you have approximately:  "request-of-you
(imper), that (observative:  someone unspecified) talks-to-me about ..."
which still gets your point across.  However, with the "ko" absorbed,
there is no sumti to separate, and the "cu" is not needed or allowed.

As an answer, call or write again regarding getting LogFlash.  I of
course believe it is helpful - it is the ONLY reason I can lojbo cusku
with any skill.

>.i ju'e ki'e co'o lojbab.
>I conclude. thanx. bye.

>                                        la korant.
>                                        Coranth

You wanted "mi'e korant." for complete grammaticality.
______________________________________________________________________

Overall an excellent first effort, and it better than others argues for
some explanation of logical connectives at an early stage.  I will
modify my textbook outline as a result.

Keep it up!

ki'eco'omi'e lojbab