From: cbmvax!uunet!infmx!godzilla!cortesi (David Cortesi)
Message-Id: <9105021554.AA25843@godzilla.informix.com>
Subject: *malglico and misc queries
To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com (lojban mailing list)
Date: Thu, 2 May 91 8:54:52 PDT
Status: RO


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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