Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: lujvo

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 04:18:32 -0400

At 05:32 PM 06/12/2000 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>In a message dated 00-06-12 16:05:25 EDT, aulun writes:
>
><< I just wanted to have a Lojban equivalent to Italian
> "Madonna" (ma donna=my lady/mistress; having a fixed - first of all
> Roman-Catholic - meaning, comparable to German "Unsere
> liebe Frau..."). >>
>
>I suppose that is where the singer got it -- she is of Italian descent, I
>seem to recall. The
>name does get around though -- consider Liebfraumilch for just one.
>
><<(Since /mamta/ isn't necessarily meant biologically, why
>not /seljbecevni/?).>>
>
>But this case IS meant biologically -- and wouldn't cevrseljbe fit the lb
>patterns better?

I'm probably completely missing the point of this discussion.

There is a direct Lojban equivalent to Italian "Madonna = my lady" in terms 
of etymology of the tanru - I would make it "mibni'u", or if you want the 
connotations of mistress of higher class, you could insert "nol" as a 
modifier for nobility (mibnolni'u), ces for holy (mibycesni'u), or selse'u 
for one who is served. For the deific inference, you could stick in "cei" 
itself recognizing the pantheonic role of the Mother of God.

But in Lojban, none of these would have the Italian MEANING of "Madonna" 
because Lojban tanru have all manner of interpretations, and lujvo select a 
single ad hoc one of these, but are not necessarily a part of the lexicon 
unless picked up by the speaking community (and/or enshrined in the 
dictionary). There is no guarantee that a given proposed lujvo will be 
understood as having a particular meaning unless it is used in Lojban text 
with that meaning and is is indeed understood as such.

To get the importance of this, I suggest that people look at the thousands 
of untranslated lujvo in the working files at www.lojban.org. We have 
lujvo, often used several times, where we have no keyword, no place 
structure. In the few attempts I've heard of from random members of the 
community looking at these files, typically no more than half suggest a 
clear meaning, and even then it likely is not the meaning intended by the 
person who made the lujvo up - that takes context and/or lots of usage. We 
don't have 2000 years of Latin/Romance/Italian to back up our metaphor and 
there are other deities in the world that could be implied in "seljbecevni" 
or any of the other variations that have popped up in this thread. Hera 
help me.

We ARE trying for a culturally neutral; language, so if I wanted a word for 
the mother of Christ, I would NOT use "cevni", I would use "xriso" as the 
basis for the lujvo. One need not be Christian to understand the concept 
"xismamta" (and whether she was biological mother and who/what was the 
biological father can be left for another debate). For the honorific 
implied in "Ma" donna - I would use the ameliorative of Lojban, so I would 
translate the name/title "Madonna" as "zanxismamta".

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
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