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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Robin Lee Powell
<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
>
> Then you can't help me, so let me do what I need to do, please,
> without all this arguing.

OK, don't let me distract you, but "express" is still a bad keyword. :)

> Again, without context to me, with nothing but the word "say" on a
> page, or "someone who speaks" or "someone who says something",

"Speak" is not the same as "say". "Speak" is indeed much closer to
"talk". In fact they usually correspond to the same word in Spanish.

> 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".

Neither of them actually requires sound, and neither "cusku" nor
"tavla" require sound either, so the medium is not really that
important. The one that involves "linguistic noises" is "bacru".

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

I understand that you don't clearly distinguish "say" and "talk" in
your mind. You clearly distinguish them in your usage, as they can
never really substitute for each other. If you were talking about
"talk" and "speak" I would understand the possible confusion better,
but "speak" is not the keyword for any gismu.

> 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.

Someone who makes language mouth noises is "lo bacru", so if "a
talker" suggests language mouth noises to you, you will also need a
new keyword for "lo tavla".

> 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.

Except "lo tavla" does not require 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.

You and I already know well what "cusku" means, so whatever keyword
you choose won't affect you or me. If your argument is that English
speakers in general get confused about the meaning of "say", to the
extent that they can't readily distinguish it from "talk" without
context, well, maybe a single keyword is just not the answer.

I do know that I have seen people misuse "cusku" thinking that it
means "express" because of the bad keyword, although that doesn't last
long because "cusku" is one of the most common words and everybody
learns quite soon that it means "say".

So, I am not particularly worried about what keyword you end up using
in this case, people end up learning the right meaning of "cusku"
anyway. I'm just not happy that we perpetuate the bad keyword plague
of the gi'uste.

mu'o mi'e xorxes