Re: [lojban] common words

[Jim Carter <jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU>]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote:
> ....
> It should be the same.  What it can mean is a different story.
> {to'e} means scalar opposite, which is not the same thing as
> reversal of the effect of an action, right?  So {tolmifra}
> doesn't automatically mean `decode'; there has to be a scale
> that has {mifra} at one end.  Who will volunteer to define it?

Clearly, lo mifra means encrypted material while lo se mifra (selmifra)
means unencrypted material, but that isn't exactly the puzzle that was
posed.  Hmmm.....  Ana, it's obvious: tolmifra means "x1 is text (derived
from original x2 by transformation procedure x3) which has been rendered
understandable to the maximum degree", as opposed to being hidden by
encryption.  Or, tolmirgau means "clarify" in the sense of removing
impediments to understanding such as jargon.

(About "decoding the human genome": it isn't cyphertext.  Our intellects
are figuring out how to read it in its own represention, the same one our
cells have been reading for billions of years.  Similarly we don't "decode"
.aulun's big5 Chinese poetry that he's translating into Lojban; readers
with the skill and the software (I have neither) read the texts on the
texts' own terms.)

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