Lojban in English/German

[pne]

Sometimes I wish certain words or syntactical constructions in one language were in another. Today it was Lojban ge ... gi ... (forethought "and").

I'm trying to compose an error message (in both English and German) indicating that a user must select a country from a drop-down list and enter a postal code in the field beneath in order to search; doing only one of those two (or neither, for that matter) doesn't make sense in this context.

However, "Please both select a country and enter a postal code" sounds a bit odd to me, as does the German "Bitte wählen Sie sowohl ein Land aus als auch geben Sie eine Postleitzahl ein" (actually, that's even worse). I'm not sure how to connect the two clauses in order to show that they must both be done -- if I only had to connect two objects of one verb, it'd be much easier, e.g. "Please enter both a country and a postal code / Bitte geben Sie sowohl ein Land als auch eine Postleitzahl ein".

So I'd really like "Bitte ge wählen Sie ein Land aus gi geben Sie eine Postleitzahl ein". (I'd even settle for "Bitte wählen Sie ein Land aus gi'e geben Sie eine Postleitzahl ein", using the Lojban afterthought connective.)

"Please not only select a country but also enter a postal code" isn't much better, either. (And what would that be in German? "Bitte wählen Sie nicht nur ein Land aus, sondern geben Sie auch eine Postleitzahl ein"? Actually, both of those only make sense if the user has selected a country but not entered a postal code, and neither applies to the case where the user has entered a postal code but has not selected a country.)

Comments

[kake]

How about something like "Country and postal code are both required?"

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

How about using "angeben" in both clauses?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Do you think that would work for selecting something from a drop-down list?

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I think so.

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

The verb "provide" could stand in adequately for both verbs in English, as far as I can tell from the context. It's only quasi-dictionarical, but I've seen it used elsewhere.

provide

[pne.livejournal.com]

Yes... I suppose it might. Thanks!

[twirlandswirl.livejournal.com]

Hey there!

I need to talk to you pretty quickly about the Support Plushie exchange, because the send-out date is a week from today, and I've yet to be able to contact you to tell you who you'll be plushying! So, please, reach me on LJtalk, on AIM under SymphoniumVitae, catch me in IRC under "twirl," or email me at twirlandswirl@lj.

Thanks!