ELG: detri

detri is not used much.

detri = x1 is the date (day, week, month, year) of state/event x2, at location x3, by calendar x4

The location is only important if we're talking about radically different timezones, or different planets, and the default calendar is the standard Western one as it is international. If you want to use, for example, the Arabic or Chinese calendars, you can put lo xrabo or lo jungo in the fourth place. (As always, context is important — in a discussion of Islamic history we would probably assume that the Arabic calendar was being used).

The tricky bit is the number in x1. Normally we don't want to specify the day, week, month and year! To prevent confusion, the following conventions are used:

• If there is only one number, it is the day e.g. li pano is the 10th.
• If there are two numbers, they are the day and month e.g. li pa no pi'e pa re is 10/12, or the 10th of December.
• If there are three numbers, they are day, month, year (not month, day, year, as in the American convention) e.g. li re pa pi'e ze pi'e pa so xa so is 21/7/69 — the date of the first moon landing.

We can therefore say

li repa pi'e ze pi'e pasoxaso cu detri lonu lo remna cu klama lo lunra

21/7/1969 is-the-date-of the-event a human goes (to) the moon.

Now, just as with tcika, we often want to put the event first — after all, in most languages we would normally say My birthday is on the fifteenth of August rather than The fifteenth of August is the date of my birthday. We can manage this change by using place tagsANOTHER NAME!!!, e.g.

fe lonu mi jbena cu detri fa li pa mu pi'e bi

The-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

but it is nice to use se, like this:

lonu mi jbena cu se detri li pamu pi'e bi

The-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

In both cases, putting the lo nu before the cu is convenient — and a well-established Lojban trick of the trade: cu is powerful enough to close off any structure in front of it, including lo nu mi jbena.

As you have probably guessed, there is also a preposition for dated: de'i, which works like ti'u (notice how prepositions tend to be similar to the verb they suggest). So the other way I can tell you my birthday is:

mi jbena de'i li pa mu pi'e bi

Question: If only one number is used with detri, it is the day. So how do we say what year an event happened without giving the day and month as well?

Use datru.