mi namako

Mind and thought: Wisdom, mental health, cognition, self-talk, consciousness, philosophy, psychology, optimizing your thinking, productivity hacks
Menso kaj penso: Saĝaĵoj, psiĥa sano, kogno, memparolado, psiĥa stato, filozofio, psikologio, rearanĝi sian pensadon, plibonigi sian produktokapablon
jan-ante
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Re: mi namako

Post by jan-ante »

janKipo wrote: If it is established, it isn't an error -- norma loquendi
jan nasa li wile pakala e toki pona.
here you manipulate with the word "established". with your definition it is still error, because just a few people who has made the common error could actually change nothing. it requires your efforts to make it really established.
also norma loquendi is not applicable to tp because it does not serve as a normal language, i.e. it is not a tool of communication between poeple. note on this forum we do not use tp to transmit any important information
Norma again -- it is the linguist's job to explain what happened -- as best he can, the speaker's job is just to speak understandably
they are free to speak with as many errors as they want, but they can not make an innovation in language. moreover :), the use of kin la is not understandable without additional explanations in english.
janMato
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Re: mi namako

Post by janMato »

jan-ante wrote: also norma loquendi is not applicable to tp because it does not serve as a normal language, i.e. it is not a tool of communication between poeple. note on this forum we do not use tp to transmit any important information
Ah! A challenge! I just checked, in Wisconsin at least you can have legally valid contracts written in foreign languages. So anyone want to sell me something so we can write the contract in toki pona?

mi wili e ni: mi kepeken mani tawa ijo seme. jan seme li esun e ijo tawa mi? mi tu li sitelin e lipu pi lawa mani. lipu pi lawa mani li sona pi suli mute.

Maybe I'll try sending a legally binding offer to purchase a sweater to jan Sonja in toki pona.
jan-ante
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Re: mi namako

Post by jan-ante »

janMato wrote: Ah! A challenge! I just checked, in Wisconsin at least you can have legally valid contracts written in foreign languages. So anyone want to sell me something so we can write the contract in toki pona?
wisconsin? a city in oklahoma? no, too far from me. also, i dont understand this page. i understand the most of the words, but together they make no sense to me
mi kepeken mani tawa ijo seme.

you need e after kepeken. also it is not clear what seme is doing here. from official dictionary, seme is a question word, but i dont see any question here.. but, may be jan Kipo will say it is an established usage...
mi tu li sitelin e lipu pi lawa mani.
lipu pi lawa mani = contract?
lipu pi lawa mani li sona pi suli mute.
you mean "contract is a knowledge of great importance"?
janMato
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Re: mi namako

Post by janMato »

jan-ante wrote:wisconsin? a city in oklahoma? no, too far from me. also, i dont understand this page. i understand the most of the words, but together they make no sense to me


Just the line..."MCC makes much of the fact that the order form is entirely in Italian.... We find nothing in the CISG that ... retreat from the proposition that parties who sign contracts will be bound by them regardless of whether they ... understand them'." In otherwords, a contract was upheld in a non-Italian jurisdiction when the contract was in Italian and the buyer didn't understand Italian. So toki pona is valid for legal contracts in Wisconsin and probably Oklahoma. We'll have to wait for a test case.
jan-ante wrote:
mi kepeken mani tawa ijo seme.

... also it is not clear what seme is doing here. from official dictionary, seme is a question word, but i dont see any question here.. but, may be jan Kipo will say it is an established usage...


Nah. What you're observing here is what people sound like when they're speaking a 2nd language. They're reason by analogy from known languages and hit on common solutions to either because it is a universal or because its just a common solution. "thing-what" reminds me of eitthvað (IS) ~ one-what and ЧТО-ТО (RU) ~ what-this. I'm not any good at Japanese, but something = nanigoto, and what =nanigoto, at least according to this dictionary

We're the blind leading the blind. Mi ale li e ni : jan pi oko ala li lawa e jan pi oko ala.
jan-ante wrote: lipu pi lawa mani = contract?
you mean "contract is a knowledge of great importance"?
[/quote]
Yeah, that's what I had in mind. But "lipu pi lawa mani" could also be "bills of hard currency", it's up to the listener to choose.
janKipo
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Re: mi namako

Post by janKipo »

Hot damn! this is getting almost philosophical in its circularity and ad hocitude!
I rather think that an Italian contract would be upheld in Wisconsin (where the legal languages are German -- including Schwitzerdeutsch -- Swedish, Norwegian and, as a last resort, English)(oh, and Finnish) only if it could be shown that the presenters of the contract had not materially misrepresented its contents. Under that condition, a contract in tp would fly (although figuring out what the content really was would be a different matter).

Well, the single sentence (without the lead-in) means "What do I use my money for?" and I suspect that what was meant was the I-E generated relative clause "what I use my money for," though it may be the indirect question of the same form and thus not be wrong. The same worry arises about the next sentence. Either way, the mnessage comes through though the grammar may not quite work for one intention.

But he does need 'e' with 'kepeken' as a verb (confusingly)

I would have said (I think) 'sitelen lawa mani' "a legal writing about money" but the ambiguity gets overwhelming pretty early on here. 'lipu pi lawa mani' looks like a page on economics.

Most language most of the time is used for totally trivial and stupid things (since it is mainly used by -- well, humans). We expect more of tp since it is written mainly and we have come to think that written stuff is more important, but stuff like thre Cairo genizah show that most written stuff is pretty much crap, too. All that matters is that it is used and how it is used defines what it is (that Norma again). Now, as noted, tp -- and conlangs generally -- start off with a set of specifications and more may be promulgated as the language develops. Up to a point, these promulgations, if from a recognized authority (e.g. the creator or her delegates), can override usage, making the common wrong and the weird right. But, in the absence of such edicts or after the language breaks free, usage decides. Of course, there remains the whole issue of style, but that is matter for another time.

In tp's case, there is the further factor that the words (with a few exceptions) are explicitly said to not be limited to some selected categories, but to be potentially in all. Where some of these potentials are ever realized or not does not matter, but the fact that one is realized, even in a surprising (at first glance) way is a cause for rejoicing (the language is maturing), not for condemnation ("That can't do that"). The surprising use of 'kin la' needs -- for some of us, at least -- to be explained, but then, most of tp usage needs to be explained and we pick it up as we go along and, hopefully, get better at working out our own explanations over time. I can figure out maybe 85% today, but a clever user could drop that back below 50% in a flash -- and be quite correct throughout (have done in fact).
jan-ante
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Re: mi namako

Post by jan-ante »

janMato wrote: ЧТО-ТО (RU) ~ what-this.
"what-that", but doesnt matter. you simply dont need seme after ijo, because:
ijo
___ n thing, something, stuff,
___ anything, object
similarly you dont need kin la construction, because you can use kin right after the predicate without any la. those two are just extra complications contrary to tp philosophy
janKipo
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Re: mi namako

Post by janKipo »

Well, if the relative clause is aimed at, you do need something more than 'ijo' -- just what is an issue.
Unfortunately, 'kin' after the verb -- or in any other prespecified case -- will not always mean what 'kin la' means. But, for each use of 'kin la' there is, I think, a place where an internal 'kin' does the same (but this is true of a large number of 'la' expressions, so doesn't affect the legitimacy of 'kin la').
jan-ante
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Re: mi namako

Post by jan-ante »

janKipo wrote:Well, if the relative clause is aimed at, you do need something more than 'ijo' -- just what is an issue.
no, this is not serious saying. i am sure that you will translate mi kepeken e mani tawa ijo as "i use (a) money for something". without any seme. you will not translate "i use money for thing"
Unfortunately, 'kin' after the verb -- or in any other prespecified case -- will not always mean what 'kin la' means.
no language transmits the information with 100% accuracy. the accuracy of tp is lower than that of natural languages. moreover :), the inaccuracy from the substitution above is much less than that of 33 versus 44 (both mute in tp)
janKipo
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Re: mi namako

Post by janKipo »

True, 'kin la' is generally less precise than the version with internal 'kin,' just like the sloppy English use of "only" and "too" and similar words. We generally get close enough, or, if it makes a difference, figure it out (as witness my tendency to "correct").

If I just want to say "I use the money for something." then 'mi kepeken e mani tawa ijo' is correct and compact. In the instant case, however, I took the original to be aiming at "for something that is ..." (I forget the details), which might ,in English, use a Hw relative word, which looks just like a Hw question word (one of those is actually Wh, but I can never remember which). In that case, you still don;t have the 'seme,' but you need something more than just 'ijo,' since that 'ijo' has to be connected to the separate sentence which carries the force of the relative clause.
jan-ante
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Re: mi namako

Post by jan-ante »

janKipo wrote: In the instant case, however, I took the original to be aiming at "for something that is ..." (I forget the details), which might ,in English, use a Hw relative word, which looks just like a Hw question word (one of those is actually Wh, but I can never remember which). In that case, you still don;t have the 'seme,' but you need something more than just 'ijo,' since that 'ijo' has to be connected to the separate sentence which carries the force of the relative clause.
not really erelated to the expamples in this topic, but probably one can try ijo sama ni: ... . but, in fact we need a particular example to see how it works
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