From robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR Mon Jul 17 11:10:03 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3015 invoked from network); 17 Jul 2000 18:10:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 17 Jul 2000 18:10:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr) (139.179.10.13) by mta1 with SMTP; 17 Jul 2000 18:10:01 -0000 Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (IDENT:robin@fast3.fen.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.97.28]) by firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e6HICkj22678 for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 21:12:46 +0300 (EET DST) Sender: robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR Message-ID: <39734AED.44FAFBC@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 21:05:33 +0300 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "lojban@onelist.com" Subject: Swearing with tanru [was : Re: "which?" (was: RE: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component] References: <39733D14.E4987E90@bilkent.edu.tr> <39734793.32278CEA@reutershealth.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Robin 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. 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. If I remember rightly, the same thing came up with {malglico} i.e. strictly speaking it does not mean "Bloody English!" but English in a derogatory way, which is not quite the same. OTOH, since it's a lujvo, I suppose we don't have to be so fussy about place structure as we do with tanru. BTW, {mabla} is begining to catch on amongst my friends as an all-purpose swearword. co'o mi'e robin. -- "If the cucumber is bitter, spit it out, but do not ask why there are bitter cucumbers in the world" - Marcus Aurelius. Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Üniversitesi Ankara Turkey http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin