[lojban-beginners] Re: Experimental cmavo was: du'e preti

["Brett Williams" <mungojelly@gmail.com>]

On 4/15/08, Jon Top Hat Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:

Where could I find these cmavo? I asked about a non-lojban {zo} equivalent awhile ago but got no response.

"zo'oi", as xorxes said.  "la'oi" and "zo'oi" are the only experimental cmavo that are widely used and known these days.
 
Experimental cmavo are often proposed informally, and usually not recorded anywhere.  Someone will say "what if [experimental cmavo] meant [some meaning]?" and then other people in the conversation will respond with their opinions, and maybe try it out.  Most of the time no one remembers, 
and when anyone does remember it usually dies out rapidly.
 
There's an experimental cmavo that to the best of my knowledge was invented in the past few weeks: mu'a'a'a'a (meaning "muhahahaha").  I've seen several different jbopre use it, and I've used it myself.  I wouldn't mind if that one stuck around, but it does give you a sense of how experimental cmavo can tend to be faddish. :)

There's a proposal which I believe is fairly recent to make "dai'o" be a "dai" that specifically applies the attitudinal to "ko", that is that tells you to feel that way: ".a'o dai'o" -- "be hopeful" 
 
There have been a number of different proposals for a way to correct an error that you've just made, substituting a correct string for an erroneous string.  Daniel has recently been working on a proposal using "le'ai" "sa'ai" and "lo'ai" that I think has a chance at filling this long-available niche. 
 
There's a cmavo I've heard occasionally which is used to quote onomatopoeia, does anyone remember that one? 
  
There's a wiki page with some old proposals: 
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Currently+Proposed+Experimental+Cmavo&bl
None of those are active, to my knowledge.  There's a lot of different stuff about multiple worlds; must have been someone's trip sometime. :) 
 
Experimental cmavo are more important IMHO as a possibility than as an actuality.  If you have an interesting idea, I am personally willing to consider it.  Sounds can trigger a shift to a new way of understanding language, and any way of understanding language which we want to explore can be included in this way into our shared language.  This is however a living language, and one that is already fat with semantics from many different natural languages, and a grammar which is already trickily filled with secret passages and trap doors.  So only the most interesting and useful cmavo will make it into popular use-- even many of the official cmavo, famously the entire mex system, don't actually make the cut. 
 
mu'o mi'e .bret.