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> "Saw Gerrera used to say a fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day" — Jyn Erso
This line caused some difficulty for Lojban; the problem stems from the notion of "having lost everything" but still having a sharp stick and the means to stick it to the bad guy. The set of everything presumably includes pointy sticks: it's not much of an everything otherwise. And if one has a sharp stick, then a Sith lord (or whomever) could lop off limbs, which points to the fact that there was not nothing left to lose.
Logically, pedants should be shushed during inspirational speeches if they are not wise enough to hold their peace.
> .i damba sepi'o po'o pa ruble mudga'a
> .i claxu so'a da
> .i seri'anai mu'e jamji'a
>
> struggle! using only a weak stick
> lack! almost all
> nevertheless achieve victory
… is probably bad material for a bad (or patriotic) war poster, and mostly shows how far off the rails that translation effort went. I was trying out various non-literal interpretations. The victory thing really does need a "la'a" (probably) qualifier, as logically outcomes are subject to "event and randomness", but that may make not for good storytelling, nor for a properly rousing speech, especially if the audience is lacking in logic. There is a funny bit in the "Crest of the Stars" anime where the Abh military intelligence gives something like a 97.3% chance of victory. Defeat factors included "unknown phenomena" and whatnot.
Natural languages are messy, which leads to statements that are false such as "everyone owns a smartphone". One need only find one person who lacks a smartphone to send this argument down in flames. (And there it goes… kablooie!) The statement becomes a problem when someone takes the falsehood as truth, and then you could (or already did) end up with a technodystopia where a smartphone is required for access to the toilet, because "everyone owns a smartphone" (false!) and if they have a phone the phone isn't ever broken and always has a charge and has been paid for and there isn't creepy tracking and the supporting tech always works and building billions of smartphones ever year (plus supporting tech) is sustainable. But hey hey the GDP went up, so all is well!!
In unrelated news, humans may have trouble with radical change.
So to recap, in the first case we have what might be called the bargain bin everything: sure, it says everything on the tin, but then you read the fine print. The second case with the smartphone is more an aspirational everything, sort of like how a Microsoft wants to have 100% market dominance be it by hook or by crook. Both uses may be considered problematic for various reasons.
"Only" is another sometimes troublesome word. Back when I had a television there would be ads for "monster truck, only at the Tacoma dome". One might imagine that other locations host monster truck, and the "only" is being used to create a false sense of exclusiveness. They might weasel around and say the "only" applies to the local market, however narrowly that need be defined to exclude other stadii that only host monster truck. Or maybe other locations did not add the "only" in their ad copy?
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