Symbols, identificators etc.

Language learning: How to speak Toki Pona, translation problems, advice, memory aids, tools and methods to learn Toki Pona and other languages faster
Lingva lernado: Kiel paroli Tokiponon, tradukproblemoj, konsiloj, memoraj helpiloj, iloj kaj metodoj por pli rapide lerni Tokiponon kaj aliajn lingvojn
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jan Pilo
Posts: 42
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:59 am
Location: Polska

Symbols, identificators etc.

Post by jan Pilo »

Hello,
how would you say:
"highway US 60"
"road I-24"
math
"A point"
"B plane"
Do you think that symbols need to be introduced by a category? (nimi, sitelen) Probably they are imported as proper names or "proper signs".
I guess, they will work differently in different languages or even fields (see above examples). E.g. in Polish you say 100 USD, whereas in English USD 100. etc.
I am aware it's not a tp specialization, as is the case with ignoring of numbers.
Piotr M.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Symbols, identificators etc.

Post by janKipo »

The roads are relatively simple -- except for the lack of tp words for letters and numerals and the fact that doing tp words as proper names doesn't yet have a good set of conventions. "I-60" just is the name of a road, so, for now, use "foreign quotes" 'nasin "I-60"'.

A similar solution seems to apply to points and lines and spaces and whatever -- assuming we have words for "point" and a more proper one for "line" and so on.

Eventually, of course, I do hope we get a system somehow of at least names for numerals and letters of at least the English Latin alphabet (a few more would be nice, too, but maybe not the whole IPA). And then we could drop the quotes.

Money is a whole different matter since now we are dealing with things (albeit rather abstract ones) and not names. So, "USD 10" really comes over as '- luka luka' -- clearly not lipu but the abstraction of lipu. And I have no idea how to do it short of a dozen sentences of paraphrase. Note that officially this has nothing to do with names for numeral. But, of course, if we had a decimal numeral set, someone would surely figure out a way to use them to enumerate.
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