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Re: Swearing with tanru [was : Re: "which?" (was: RE: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component]
At 09:05 PM 07/17/2000 +0300, Robin wrote:
John Cowan wrote:
> Robin wrote:
> > (a) impermissable culturally specific metaphor (i.e. malglico)?
> > (b) not really malglico (because in virtually no culture would someone
> > appreciate being called a dog) but meaningless if talking to a human and
> > tautological if talking to a dog?
> > (c) not exactly "high Lojban" but permissable given the communicative
> > context (i.e. the listener would automatically fill in the missing
> > {pe'a} or read the sentence as "le do mamta cu simla lo'e gerku")?
>
> Probably all three. But the righteous way is to form a tanru with
> "mabla" and a fair description of the person: thus "you are a $#(@#
redhead"
> is "do mabla ke xunre se kerfa". In Lojban, there are an infinite
> number of swear-words!
>
Am I wrong in assuming that {lo mabla ke xunre se kerfa} presumably does
not mean "you are a ***ing redhead" in the sense of "you are a redhead,
which is something I find objectionable" (which is how I would normally
interpret the English)? I would interpret the tanru as "You are a
redhead of an objectionable kind" i.e. many redheads are perfectly OK,
but you happen to be one of those mabla ones.
That is a possible interpretation, but John should have suggested the same
quote, replacing "ke" with "le" (use the place structure, Luke). "You REDHEAD!"
Alternatively, make it "xunre se kerfa mabla" (redheaded ***er).
Is there a way to
construct the tanru to be really bigoted and imply that _all_ redheads
are mabla, which I think expresses the english "****ing redhead" better.
Maybe include "cnano": typically-mabla redhead
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org