Re: [lojban-beginners] Obscene vocabulary

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Ruler11 <ruler11post@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How can I use bad language in lojban ?

The main answer to your question is a somewhat strange one!  Many
things in Lojban are as simple as possible in one respect, so that
they can be as broad and flexible as possible from another
perspective.  The main way to swear in Lojban is the one root "mabla",
which is the only root with an inherently offensive quality.  But it
also has the combining form "mal", with which you can combine it with
any other root(s) to make a new offensive term.

For instance "kalci" means feces, but by itself it's a neutral term,
which might be best translated with a neutral word like "feces" or
"excrement".  To give it the negative quality of the English swear
"shit" you can mix "mabla" in with it and say "malkalci".  So if you
said to someone "do kalci pe'a" (You're feces, metaphorically.) it's
possible you could be insulting them, but you could also be saying
something nice-- I'm reminded of someone sympathetically saying like
"wow, they just ate you up and shat you out, huh?"  If you said "do
malkalci pe'a" (You're shit, metaphorically.) you would definitely be
insulting them, calling them a piece of shit.

Incidentally there's also the opposite root, "zabna", which describes
something positive and has the combining forms "zan" and "za'a".  So
you could also make the word "zankalci" which would be shit with a
positive connotation, perhaps something like the English phrase
"that's the shit".  You could say "lo do zgike cu zankalci pe'a", your
music is the shit, metaphorically (meaning that it's good).  If you
said to someone "do zankalci pe'a" (You're the shit, metaphorically.)
you would definitely NOT be insulting them, you'd be saying something
nice.

So since we can unambiguously make a swear out of anything in Lojban,
we're not limited to the ordinary possibilities.  You can just as
easily call someone a "malbadna", which means "banana" except with a
derogatory connotation.  The way you'd have to translate it would be
like "you fucking banana", but there's nothing in it about sex really,
it just transforms "banana" itself into a swear word.

So, one ordinary and very Lojbanic way to swear about things is to
just call them what they are, but mix in some "mabla" to make clear
how you feel about them.  For instance you could say "lo malklaji cu
dukse malclani" which would translate as something like "the damned
street is too damned long" or "the fucking street is too fucking
long"-- but it doesn't really have anything about damning or fucking
or anything, it just makes "street" and "long" themselves into swears.

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o

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