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*malglico and misc queries
- To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com (lojban mailing list)
- Subject: *malglico and misc queries
- From: cbmvax!uunet!infmx!godzilla!cortesi (David Cortesi)
- Date: Thu, 2 May 91 8:54:52 PDT
On 26 April, "Ivan Derzhanski" <uunet!chaos.cs.brandeis.edu!iad> said it:
> Second, to avoid being accused in malglicoism or malmerkoism, will you
> please give...
On 30 april, mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU said it:
> ... These aren't tanru, these are malglico crudities...
> ...John can't supply you with
> non-malglico tanru from Nickel or Neon, becuase there are none. There isn't
> even a malglico tanru for it
And nobody called them on it. Well, it didn't look right to me; I
didn't believe it was possible in Lojban to slap "mal" on the front of
something and make a pejorative out of it. It's too latinate and/or
esperantish.
For starters, the above usages might only be expressing an attitude,
not a veridical assertion, but they have the form of lujvo. I'm sure
there is an attitudinal for "I think this is disgusting: English
usage." But let us take it that they meant malglico to mean
"thoughtless transliteration of English idiom."
So I pulled out the word lists for the first time in months, and what
happened? What usually happens: I got lost in a spiralling nest of
recursive parenthetical queries and red-herring chases.
First, there is a gismu malbe, rafsi mal, meaning "x is derogatory of y"
or such. As near as I can tell, a description of x, not an assertion
that x is deserving of derogation. So "malglico" means a derogatory
kind of English culture (?)
The simplest way I could find of saying what Ivan and Robert(?) meant was
"bad english metaphor" = xlali glico tanru = xlagictan
This has the advantage of SOUNDING like a curse. (Say it! Then wipe
your screen off!) But it isn't accurate. What I want here is something
other than simple left-to-right modification. I want
(bad because English) kind of tanru
Can somebody who understands sumti connectives help me out here?
In the course of finding this I ran off down the following dead-end alleys
and would appreciate anybody's comments on how to escape them...
How to say: habit and/or habitual.
How to say: customary. tcaci = custom; is it enough to use the quality
abstractor ka? Is katcaci = customary?
How to say: cultural, x springs from culture y. Here ka kulnu is clearly
not adequate.
How to say: tilt, as in x tilts/leans at angle y in frame z
How to say: bias, as in x is biased/directed/influenced in direction y by
applied force z
How to say: tend, as in x tends toward y (naturally, of itself)
How to say: thoughtless. Negation of sanji=aware? And then abstracted?
How to say: unwise. Negation of prije and abstracted?
And here's a biggie: how do you say idiom? An idiom is not simply a
metaphor, it's a metaphor that through constant usage has lost its
metaphoric indirection and simply means what it originally suggested.
(Like red herring.)
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