Re: [lojban] Onomatopoeia (err, sp?)

[Pierre Abbat <phma@webjockey.net>]

On Sunday 28 March 2004 02:05, la_okus wrote:
> Buzz, moo, hiss, swish. Higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turvy, hunky-
> dory. Flim-flam, flip-flop, airy-fairy. Fiddle-faddle, splish-splash,
> dilly-dally. Onomatopoeia are a somewhat ill-defined category of
> words meant to mimic the sound of what they describe. While
> some behave themselves, others have become full-blown
> nouns and verbs, ready to appear anywhere in the sentence.
> "MOO, Said the cow." "He knocked the 3-pointer with a
> SWOOSH." "The rain PLOPPED onto the CUCKOO."
>
> Every language has different onomato's, which sometimes
> overlap: spanish cats say "miau" and sneeze with an "achis".
> Some languages, Japanese in particular, contain huge libraries
> of them that drive deep into the language and even have sounds
> for feelings. Japanese people go uki-uki when they're happy,
> and their flickering lights go chika-chika, also used to describe
> eye sore from too much TV or computer (that one applies to me,
> typing this at 2AM).
>
> The Japanese separate onomatopoeia into three groups:
> sounds of nature (gero-gero = ribbit), states of the external world
> (gocha-gocha = state of disorder), and conditions of the mind
> (ira-ira = frustration). How much do attitudinals overlap with this
> system? How could some of these sounds be integrated
> unambiguously into lojban grammar? Any other comments?

There are two ways of using onomatopoeia in Lojban:
*Use the cmavo {sa'ei} as a vocative: sa'ei tresk. le blaci cu farlu
*Make a fu'ivla: tsaparatsa'i (ratamacue), bacrnmu (moo).

phma
-- 
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa