Re: [lojban] Re: cusku - say or express?

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:45:28PM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Robin Lee Powell
> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> >
> > Again: without context, "say" and "talk" are too close for
> > flashcards; I can't keep them distinguished.  "express" will do
> > well enough; if you have a better suggestion, make it, but I
> > *can* *not* use "say" and "talk" as distinct keywords for
> > flashcard purposes; they're too close in my brain, and other
> > people have said the same thing.
> 
> I can only say that "cusku" can never be translated as "express",
> and can always be translated as "say", so I don't see how
> "express" can be a better keyword, or indeed how any keyword would
> be better than "say", which is an almost perfect match.

Then you can't help me, so let me do what I need to do, please,
without all this arguing.

> The exact same distinction between "say" and "talk" exists in
> Spanish between "decir" and "hablar", (or in French dire/parler,
> or in Esperanto diri/paroli, and I'm sure in lots of other
> languages) so I don't quite understand what you find so confusing
> about it.

Again, without context to me, with nothing but the word "say" on a
page, or "someone who speaks" or "someone who says something", that
means "makes language noises with mouth" to me (and other native
English speakers have said the same thing).  "talk" and "someone who
talks" mean *exactly the same thing*.  I understand that they're not
linguistic synonyms, but the meaning of both, in isolation, to me is
"makes language noises with mouth".

You don't have to agree, or have the same confusion, but surely you
can *understand* what I just said?

The problem in smart.fm is not the main entry for cusku, which is
"x1 says x2 to for audience x3 via expressive medium x4"; I can
recognize that as distict from tavla (or, if I can't, it's my
problem).  The problem is the place cards, like "lo cusku" for "a
sayer".  "a sayer" and "a talker" mean *exactly the same thing* to
me, neither of which is cusku (again, language mouth noises) there's
nothing to distinguish them except to purely memorize that "a sayer"
is cusku and "a talker" is tavla, but the whole point is to memorize
*the meaning* and not just the keyword correspondences.

Without explicitely memorizing the correspondences, I'm going to
always say that "a sayer" and "a talker" are both "lo tavla",
because they both mean mouth noises.

Having to engage in explicit keyword memorization annoys the hell
out of me, and even if it's not quite correct, "an expresser"
matches cusku to me better than "a sayer", because "an expresser"
doesn't mean mouth noises.


-Robin

-- 
They say:  "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm  thinking:  "Does it even occur to you to try for something
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