From ragnarok@pobox.com Thu Jul 19 10:03:22 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: raganok@intrex.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 19 Jul 2001 17:03:21 -0000 Received: (qmail 44537 invoked from network); 19 Jul 2001 17:03:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 19 Jul 2001 17:03:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO intrex.net) (209.42.192.246) by mta2 with SMTP; 19 Jul 2001 17:03:19 -0000 Received: from Craig [209.42.200.34] by intrex.net (SMTPD32-5.05) id A2E1BE6E0036; Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:03:29 -0400 Reply-To: To: Subject: greeks and love (was RE: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo - new proposals featuring XOhA an...) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:03:32 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <83.d2c520f.288866f7@aol.com> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 X-eGroups-From: "Craig" From: "Craig" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 8757 >As a side-note, though not completely off the point the claim that Greeks had >three clearly distinct words for love (sexual, friendly, and charitable, say) >ranks with "Eskimos have 100 words for snow" and the ever-popular }Latin has >two different words for "or," one inclusive, the other exclusive." Read the >Symposium, a discussion of love which -- using the same stem throughout -- >ranges from genital sex through the amor intellectus dei and back to >butt-fucking. Similar ranges can be found for the other stems, though not so >much in one place (Lord Byron's feelings for the Maid of Athens were probably >not exactly what Jesus had in mind when he said "Love one another" but he >uses the same verb). In the process of all that discussion (it was a >favorite topic by Greek moralists), I suspect that there are twenty kinds of >love sorted out and each can be assigned in some cases by some authors to any >of the three stems -- and a couple of others as well sometimes. >But note that expressing love is not the same as describing it (I thought we >were almost through that one) and so saying {iu}, with or without ruffles and >flourishes is not saying {mi prami} or {mi broda brode prami} with whatever >fine points you want to apply (and this is where to apply them). The greeks had three different roots which meant love. The eskimos actually speak aglutinative languages in which there can be as many words for snow as you want, but around five roots that meant snow - but these often referred to other things as well, as does English (powder might mean snow if encountered in a poem, for instance.) As for the wisdom terms, sophia and phronesis, these are also different roots. Lord Byron used the word love because that is the ONLY word for it in his language (english, which Jesus did not speak so it wasn't really the same verb). The greek stems varied in meaning, admittedly, but not as widely as the English word does. Eros was ALWAYS the sexual kind, for example, while philo was ALWAYS a more 'how you feel' kind. how you felt varied with philo; in plato and aristotle it was more like friendship than love. There is actually significance to the fact that plato was a philosopher and not an erosopher - he enjoyed knowledge, but he wasn't getting in bed with it and having passionate intercourse. I think having iu not mean mi prami is good, because it makes lojban the only language that does not need body language or smileys - the best English gloss for ui is not happiness but :-), which would never do in a formal paper. But there is more than one kind of smile. A mischevous grin is happy, but it is not anything like the face you make while eating your favorite food. Both are ui in lojban. Whatever happened to total unambiguity?