a pound was five dollars: Difference between revisions

From Lojban
Jump to navigation Jump to search
m (Gleki moved page jbocre: A pound was five dollars to A pound was five dollars without leaving a redirect: Text replace - "jbocre: A" to "A")
 
(2 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
 
#REDIRECT [[How to say it in Lojban]]
How do you say "a pound was five dollars"?
*'''lo brityrupnu be li pa pu vamji lo merkyrupnu be li mu'''
 
We don't say "mu merkyrupnu" for "five dollars"; that means five
things (prices? costs?) which are a dollar each.
How do we do it instead? ''Uh, lo merkyrupnu be li mu?''
No, that doesn't work either: that is one or more things which
are (cost?) five dollars each.
[[jbocre: Loglan|Loglan]] solves this problem by a conventional hack of using the
number ''5d'' to mean five dollars.  This is ''malylojbo''.
The more general question is, how do you speak of measurements, abstracted from the thing being measured? The abstract notion of "5 m", as opposed to "that which is 5 m long"? Solve that, and you solve the abstract $5, as in "my bank balance is $5." For the physical currency, on the other hand, all you need is ''sicni be le merko befi li mu'' (sicni obviously being intended for banknotes as well as coins); and I don't think ''sicni befi mu meryru'u'' is unintelligible either. -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]. ''What's the second '''be''' for in ''sicni be le merko befi li mi''? Is the ''fi li mi'' supposed to be attached to ''merko''? --pne'' Or is it supposed to be a ''bei'' instead? --[[pne|pne]]
''le ka ritru'u li pa pu dunli le ka meryru'u li mu kei le ka ce'u vamji makau''
Yeah, I was afraid the answer was ''ka''. I certainly don't think it's ''ni''; ''leni meryru'u li mu'' seems to be just silly. But does this work for "my bank balance is $5"? Or do I use ''vamji'' there too? -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]
?? meryru'u mumei?  It requires a convention, but a relatively clear one, whose literal meaning is not going to be common.
* This is clearly ''not'' a general solution (if a solution at all), for "five feet", say, is not a set and even less so "five degrees" of temperature.

Latest revision as of 14:18, 2 September 2014