[lojban-beginners] Re: sel- vs se

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Joshua Choi <joshua@choi.name> wrote:
>
> But seriously, I'm also just interested in how people generally use "ti
> selkla mi" versus "ti se klama mi". To me, the former feels like the
> English, "This is our destination," and the latter feels like, "This is
> where we're going." But it's my English prejudice, and not necessarily the
> idiomatic connotations of Lojban. Do others think of the difference this
> way?


Semantically, there is no difference.  In a sense there almost could
be-- "selkla" is a lujvo, and gets its own meaning, so on that level
it could theoretically be given a meaning different than "se klama".
But because that would be confusing, there is a very strong convention
we all agree to that "sel-" lujvo automatically get exactly the same
meaning as the equivalent "se" phrase.  That's how I think of it,
anyway: Any lujvo could mean anything, but we've already agreed that
all of the "sel-" (etc) lujvo mean exactly what you'd expect them to
mean.

I try not to use squishy little lujvo like "selkla" around newbies or
in anything meant for general consumption, but I do use them sometimes
with other expert Lojbanists.  To me that's the only difference, not
so much in connotation as in register: Something where the gismu are
all squished up into just their rafsi like that reads to me like
something written for the (quite small) audience of folks who already
know most of the common rafsi.

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o