Re: [lojban] Re: .aunai and .a'unai

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

--- Zefram <zefram@fysh.org> wrote:
> John E Clifford wrote:
> >Well, we may just use the word differently.  I
> >would take both your {a'ucu'i} and {a'unai} as
> >"not interested" 
> 
> Then I'm not explaining them well enough.  We
> have an interesting (u'i)
> pair of words in English, "uninterested" and
> "disinterested": these
> aren't quite {a'unai} and {a'ucu'i}, because
> they're mostly concerned
> with a different sense of "interested", but the
> distinction between them
> is a close parallel for the distinction I'm
> drawing.

Well, we certainly use these words differently
(and not in the way that that difference usually
turns up): I use "disinterested" to mean
something like "does not profit from any side of
an issue" and "uninterested" in what I take to be
your sense of both {a'ucu'i} and {a'unai}: "have
no desire for more information about the topic"
(whether because I don't care about it or because
it repulses me).

> >Well, it seems that {a'unai} comes before
> that:
> >we are preesumably unwilling to acquire more
> >information already before we have too much
> >(namely as soon as we have enough  or very
> >shortly thereafter).
> 
> I think one can be retroactively unwilling ("I
> wish you hadn't said that"
> is roughly what "TMI" conveys).  There's also,
> as Jorge alluded to,
> "I don't want to know", which I might say if I
> see a body in your trunk.
> These are definitely {a'unai} rather than
> {a'ucu'i}.

True, TMI gets *said* after the point has been
passed, but it generally (I think) an appropriate
emotion before then. I would then have said "I
don't want to know" had I known you were going to
go on.

> An example of {a'ucu'i}: in the course of
> professional work I need to
> learn about a lot of things.  Some of them I
> feel {a'u} about.  Others I
> don't care about, and wouldn't be learning
> about for fun.  The latter I
> approach with a professional dispassion, which
> is expressed by {a'ucu'i}.

"Professional dispassion" is good -- and even
without the "professional."  My idiolect would
have this as a part of "not interested."

> More specific: part of my previous job entailed
> reading other people's
> mail.  I cultivated an {a'ucu'i} attitude. 
> Occasional bits of mail
> would be {a'u} (co-workers discussing office
> politics) or {a'unai}
> (mail to a sexual health charity).

I am not going to be the one to say that many
would find that last {a'usai} ("veddy
interesting" as the little Nazi used to say).