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[lojban] Re: Honorifics (was: RE: Re: The Any thread)
At 06:59 PM 3/3/03 -0500, Craig wrote:
>ga'i
Despite the gloss, ga'i does not cover honorific territory. It is necessary
for a true honorific system to be able to indicate more than rank.
ga'i covers the rank portion of the honorific. You have many many
attitudinals to modify the rank to get other honorific functions. "io"
would seem to likely be common.
For
instance, most communist leaders would want an honorific indicating that
they are close to the people.
Comrade(tovarishch) as I understand it implies equal in rank, but with some
formal respect, so ga'icu'i .io, or simply ".io" would work.
Also, most honorifics that have nothing to do with leadership are not simply
rank. These include both honorific meanings of "Doctor", "Professor" when
used honorifically, "the Honorable" for judges, and probably some that I
can't think of. Also consider the English system, which it would help to be
able to translate for use when translating texts. Mister for male, Miss for
unmarried female, and suspensions that don't expand to anything anymore but
are pronounced "miz" and "misses" for generic and married female
respectively. This cannot be said with ga'i, and it is essential for
translations that it be translatable.
Professor Smith might be doi smit po'u la ctuca .io
Mister is then la nanmu .io
Ms. is then la ninmu .io
Mrs. is then la fetspe .io
ga'i was put in for when a relative rank is explicitly required, as in some
Asian languages.
lojbab
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lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org