Controversial Phrases

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janMato
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Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

What are you favorite controversial compound words? How do you/should you translate controversial words?

fóstureyðing - fetus extermination - abortion. This word has a strong opinion about abortion.

ona li kama jo e jan lili lon insa ona. taso ona li wile ala e jan lili ni. ona li ....? Even this sentence has the start of an opinion because the phrase "jan lili" implies person-ness as separate from "tissue" like sijelo selo implies.

sólarhring - sun circle - time it takes the sun to go around the earth. This word has an (weak) opinion about science and astronomy.

Toki pona clearly favors recent science. Even if I personally found science to be bunk, I can't use "circle sun" to mean day, unless I want to be misunderstood.
ale pi tenpo suno la mi pali. I worked all day.
ale pi sike suno la mi pali. I worked all year.

Then there are unpleasant words, like "race traitor", which I suppose would be easy to translate from one language to another if both had the reasonably neutral words of "race" and "traitor". But in toki pona, it's like having to pick sides to translate.

jan Lawajaki li toki e ni: "mi pilin ike wawa tawa jan ni: jan walo en jan pimeja li olin e sama"

Some how that seems too watered down. Would a racist have to use the milder versions that the community uses to be intelligible or is toki pona big enough to say really mean things? (I'm not sure anyone has ever tried to translate traitor into tp.)

This is a different topic than jan Pije's experiment of translating a racist tract into toki pona--I'm sure it was and still is possible. I'm just wondering if it wouldn't be watered down so as to meet the average toki ponists view of the world because so many idioms already are somewhat opinionated and generally of a socially liberal slant (the various gender related compound words are exhibit one on this point).
Last edited by janMato on Sun Sep 05, 2010 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
janKipo
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janKipo »

Well, tp likes to make nice, to be egalitarian and accepting, so the hope would be that any attempt to be truly unpc would fail. But it would be interesting to see it put to the test. Of course, the lack of an established culture -- with the concomitant trigger words -- would thwart such efforts pretty effectively.
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:Of course, the lack of an established culture -- with the concomitant trigger words -- would thwart such efforts pretty effectively.
Maybe it's like a land rush. Whose ever ideas and vocabulary enters the field first wins.

"corrections" in bold-- as if it is possible to correct proposed phrases, that hardly have a standard for correctness.

li unpa ala - un-re-producing/abortion
li pali ala e sama- to un-copy/undo reproduction (in the literal sense)
li sin tu e telo mun - resume menstration/abortion
li lili e napna jan lili pi wile ala - reducing the number of unwanted children/abortion
li moli jan lili - baby killing/abortion
li moli jan - using toki pona's heavy reliance on polysemy, this could mean murder & abortion

Nominal versions of the same.
li kama jan lili moli.
li kama jan moli.
Last edited by janMato on Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
janKipo
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janKipo »

Well, yes and no. First in gets a certain lead, but no guarantee of ultimate success. It would not, for example, be hard to argue that 'jan lili' only applies to born children, not in utero beings whatever else you want to call them. The culture has to chew on this -- as American culture is doing now (and has been for at lest 40 years).
Some other comments. 'unpa' is not about reproduction, except causally in some way. but about a certain physical activity of the sword and scabbard sort, so it palys no particular role in discussions of abortion. "to twice make new the moon" seems a roundabout way to say "to start menstruating again" if it can be made to mean that at all. And, of course, this is a very indirect way to talk about abortion. Ditto "bringing down the number of unwanted babies" with the added uncertainty about whether 'anpa' is the right word for making number smaller ('lili' seems more likely) and whether 'jan lili pi wile ala' can mean "unwanted babies". 'jan lili moli' just means dead babies, "killing babies" is probably 'moli pi jan lili' (a kind of death, not a kind of baby). And similarly, 'jan moli' just means "dead man" (or possibly "murderer" or "mortician" and so on) but always a kind of man, not a kind of death.
If you were staking out a claim, I think your filing has been rejected.
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote: "to twice make new the moon" seems a roundabout way to say "to start menstruating again" if it can be made to mean that at all. And, of course, this is a very indirect way to talk about abortion.
That is the point of euphemisms. Oops, left out a telo, "telo mun" http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/Talk:mun

re: jan lili =? babies
In some cultures, babies aren't humans until they talk.
soweli jan pi toki ala - unborn or recently born baby before first spoken words
janKipo wrote: and whether 'jan lili pi wile ala' can mean "unwanted babies". 'jan lili moli' just means dead babies, "killing babies" is probably 'moli pi jan lili' (a kind of death, not a kind of baby).
Hmm, interesting solution to not having modifiers that indicated the action. Works for cases where the other word would fall in the object/patient category.
moku musi pi kili jelo- banana eating contest. Still can be read as fun banana food.

Doesn't help roadrunners and ostriches:
waso tawa (running bird)
* tawa waso (running of a bird sort)
janKipo wrote: And similarly, 'jan moli' just means "dead man" (or possibly "murderer" or "mortician" and so on) but always a kind of man, not a kind of death. If you were staking out a claim, I think your filing has been rejected.
Easily to remedy, words reversed.

Still, tp is not newspeak. There's gotta be a word for these things. Trying to be clinically neutral with regards to the implicit moral judgments at some point gets repugnant. Calling a sex worker an jan pali unpa or booze telo nasa, is fine, but what about cannibals and mass murders?

jan lawa li alisa e jan ni: jan li moli e jan mute li moku e sijelo pi jan ni.
vs
jan lawa li alisa e jan ni: jan akesi li moku e jan sama.
vs
jan lawa li alisa e jan ni: akesi jan li alisa moli li moku e jan mi mute.
janKipo
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janKipo »

I'm sorry, but even with 'telo' added, it doesn't suggest abortion to me, even as a euphemism. But part of that is that thwe words used are particularly eu (nor the others particularly dys), since the culture does not yet have triggers. Even 'akesi', assuming we have a grasp on the metaphorical meaning, is not emotively colored in the way tha "baby-killer" is. I don't see it rousing a tp mob to a lynching, say.
Sowelis are probably not sowelis until they are born either.
As for mass murderers (of the non-governmental sort, at least) and cannibals, our revulsion -- if we feel it -- is cultural, not innate. If your point is that eventually tp has to have some words that express the cultures disapproval of certain activities, rather than saying it must have words for revulsion of these particular activities, then I have to agree. But these words need not be emotionally fraught in the way you suggest -- indeed, we have already the word 'ike' which covers it all and is not fraught, so far as I can tell.
The last sentence raises the question about having one DO apply to two verbs, which I now think won't work.
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:The last sentence raises the question about having one DO apply to two verbs, which I now think won't work.
S li V li V e DO has 3 possible readings

S li V(tr) li V(tr) e DO. Plausible. He prepared and ate breakfast.
S li V(int) li V(tr) e DO. Plausible. He shaved and ate breakfast. Context does it job, unless one is shaving the pig before making bacon.
S li V(tr) li V(int) e DO. Should be just as plausible, but seems to violate some expectation of putting related things close to each other. This seems more likely to work in tp-- it just doesn't work in English (He ate and shaved breakfast)

And the alternative would be

S li V e DO li V e DO. he prepared breakfast and ate breakfast. This violates an expectation that one shouldn't repeat themselves unnecessarily. If the DO phrase is long, one really doesn't want to repeat.

mi lukin li sitelen e jan musi lon tomo moku pi jan "Billy"
I saw and photographed a comedian at Billy's night club
vs
mi lukin e jan musi lon tomo moku pi jan "Billy" li sitelen e jan (musi lon tomo moku pi jan "Billy").

In the first it is perfectly clear that the object hasn't changed. The second introduces the possible reading that I saw the comedian and photographed somone else (unless I repeat the whole DO).
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:As for mass murderers (of the non-governmental sort, at least) and cannibals, our revulsion -- if we feel it -- is cultural, not innate.
I suspect that at the extremes at least, it is innate. There is something probably genetically different about sociopaths, who don't react to this sort of stuff without revulsion. The nasty stuff that happens in crime fiction novels, should it be translated into toki pona, wouldn't and shouldn't be clinical and neutral descriptions.
janKipo wrote: If your point is that eventually tp has to have some words that express the cultures disapproval of certain activities, rather than saying it must have words for revulsion of these particular activities, then I have to agree.
(emph mine)

By words of course I mean "compound words"/"phrasal compounds/"periphrasal constructions". Tp's 125 base words are plenty. If there was a new base word, it probably would become neutral pretty quick because when a base word gets used in so many contexts, it is hard to think of it as having positive or negative connotations.

Then maybe we're just quibbling over the time span? I think these issues get to be addressed on first usage, everyone speaking tp already has a culture, we're not tabula rasa in the land of the invented language. The word choice on first use dictates that people start picking sides. It's long afterwards that compound words and phrases that used to mean something harsh get bleach out and we forget what they meant.
janKipo wrote: But these words need not be emotionally fraught in the way you suggest -- indeed, we have already the word 'ike' which covers it all and is not fraught, so far as I can tell.
But the pona and ike series are the most culturally dependent of them all!

If you asked me
kon ike-- pot and tobacco smoke.
kon pona-- perfume.

But if you asked a smoker or asmatic
kon ike-- perfume (for an asmatic)
kon pona-- tobacco or pot smoke
janKipo
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janKipo »

Not culturally dependent but rather the opposite, totally individualistic, i.e., always with an implicit 'tawa mi'. This, of course, also makes it hard to rouse other people with them, since they say "Well, what do you know about it?".
But I do agree that we are building a culture for tp as we go along, so that some culturally based things will get easier as time goes by and that may include giving emotive spin to words, at least in certain contexts.

The double DO problem seems to have only one solution right now within tp: full description the first time and 'ona' (with suitable help as needed) the second. Everything else has the flaws you have noted and, barring an explicit (but elidible) RHE marker, I see no way out.
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Re: Controversial Phrases

Post by janMato »

I've been running through the corpus looking for likely candidates for attempts to form good bomb-throwing-controversial phrases (i.e. something somewhat idiomatic and opinionated) So far nothing. The discussion on hate speech yielded "toki jaki", a rather mild phrase. jaki isn't used that often either. Words like "moli" are more often than not used as isolated words, not in a multi-word idiom, so no obvious attempts to distinguish slaughter/murder/execute/process/put to sleep. The subject of the sentences containing "li moli e" tend to be just people or things without further modifier-- nothing that shows a strong opinion about killers/murders/mercenary/machine gunner or in Stalins case, a hero (if you kill one your a murderer if you kill a million you're a hero).

This writer used the idiom for drugs and booze that treats drugs and booze as euphorics/mild-altering substances, rather than picking an idiom more in line with what they were trying to say. And to be honest I'm not sure if this was a pro or anti drug/alcohol message-- it appears to be a pro-smoking message, though.
telo nasa li moli e mute./kasi nasa li moli e lili
http://anadder.com/toki_pona/kasi_nasa_telo_nasa

kon ike is usually pollution and in once case, "to sigh", "soweli li kon e kon ike."
kon pona is almost entirely "frangrance" and sometimes "good spirit"
sona pona is taken, mostly philosophy and religion. This is an idiom that luddite's, atheists and the like wouldn't like.
nasin pona is an jan Sonja idiom for Taoism. It hasn't caught on, nasin pona is being used in the context of several religions meaning something like dharma or it's generic meaning "holy/righteous way"
pali pona appears to be mostly to mean "work hard!"
kama pona/tawa pona are established idioms for welcome and goodbye.

waso pona doesn't appear to have ever been used yet, but we have a canonical usage of waso ike in "Teenage poetry"
Which by the way looks like a possible triple preposition! waso ike li tawa sike lon lawa mi.

For a bunch of people that are pretty opinionated in English, we appear to be pretty neutral once we start writing toki pona.
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