Cantr II Discussion Forum

lulkoek wrote:My name just means male cow dung. *nods*

Not a literal translation though.

I didn't know dung had a gender... ha ha ha.... ha... oh, my abusing grammatical ambiguity amuses me, at least.

Dung is male in German. At least grammatically. Just saying...

Piscator wrote:Dung is male in German. At least grammatically. Just saying...

Sure, if that's what you're talking about then that means there is no such thing as feminine or neutral dung, and therefore his addition of that adjective a little weird, does it not?

Sure. I just wanted to state that dung can have a gender. (Solely relating to your answer, not to the original statement.)

Darn, I was almost hoping to get into a ridiculous argument about it.

Piscator wrote:dung can have a gender.

I should hope it doesn't.... I'd like to think it's not alive when I use it to cook my food with on Cantr.

I took it to mean the dung from a bull.

GIMPY wrote:

lulkoek wrote:My name just means male cow dung. *nods*

Not a literal translation though.

I didn't know dung had a gender... ha ha ha.... ha... oh, my abusing grammatical ambiguity amuses me, at least.

Then you won't like lojban. No grammatical ambiguity there to abuse.
<lojbanlesson>
"nakni bakni kalci" can only be "(male cow) dung". To say "male (cow dung)" you would have to say "nakni ke bakni kalci" or "nakni bakni bo kalci".
</lojbanlesson>

gejyspa wrote:

GIMPY wrote:

lulkoek wrote:My name just means male cow dung. *nods*

Not a literal translation though.

I didn't know dung had a gender... ha ha ha.... ha... oh, my abusing grammatical ambiguity amuses me, at least.

Then you won't like lojban. No grammatical ambiguity there to abuse.
<lojbanlesson>
"nakni bakni kalci" can only be "(male cow) dung". To say "male (cow dung)" you would have to say "nakni ke bakni kalci" or "nakni bakni bo kalci".
</lojbanlesson>

And you wanted to know why I want to learn lojban.
I see so many people abuse English grammar nowadays, and I would LOVE to have a language unambiguous in its grammar (though seeing the nutcases I have to put up with everyday, they'd find a way to mess it up somehow ).

gejyspa wrote:

GIMPY wrote:

lulkoek wrote:My name just means male cow dung. *nods*

Not a literal translation though.

I didn't know dung had a gender... ha ha ha.... ha... oh, my abusing grammatical ambiguity amuses me, at least.

Then you won't like lojban. No grammatical ambiguity there to abuse.
<lojbanlesson>
"nakni bakni kalci" can only be "(male cow) dung". To say "male (cow dung)" you would have to say "nakni ke bakni kalci" or "nakni bakni bo kalci".
</lojbanlesson>

Isn't latin a bit like that?

(we can continue to hijack this thread until Echoman wakes up and yells at us for being OT)
The only thing I really know about Latin grammar is that the endings tell you what role a word is filling in the sentence (subject, object, etc.) so that the word order can be anything. That's not what we are talking about here. Lojban is not like that, 'zactly. Word order is important, just like English, but you can use little words to indicate roles, as well.

Latin was not more or less ambiguous than other heavily inflecting languages. You shouldn't believe those Latin lovers (that is, people who love Latin) who tell you that in antiquity languages were generally better, purer and more precise, and that from there on everything went downhill.

The complete grammatical unambiguity is by the way one reason why I don't want to learn Lojban. If you can't make bad puns in it, why bother to learn it?

Oh don't worry, you can still make puns. And I often do. You jsut cant't make jokes basedon grammatical ambiguity.

Well, that only leaves semantical ambiguity and I was under the impression the language would leave little room in that regard, too. How would a pun in Lojban look like?

Well, here's an example from the lojban translation of Alice in Wonderland:

i lu mi’a te cmene ra lu ractu cafmi’a li’u ki’u le nu ra ctuca mi’a sei la
jitfa cakyrespa cu fengu cusku

This is the equivalent of the English version:
`We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily.

The English translation of the lojban is:
"We called him 'lapine frequent-laugher' beacause he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily.
Where it is playing on the similarity in sound between "ractu cafmi'a" and "ra ctuca mi'a"

Now, admittedly, my puns tend to be cross-language puns, such as this one:

Q: paunai mu'i ma lo lojbo bebna cu fengu fi lo du'u lo me la'o donut dunkin munchkin donut tanxe cu vasru xano po'o titnanba

A: mu'i lo nu lo tanxe cu se tcita lu bitesize li'u

("Why was the lojbannic fool angry that the box of "Dunkin' Munchkins" only had 60 pastries?" "Because the box said 'bitesize'[which reads to a lojbanist as "87"])

Or this one: [Snick, close your eyes NOW]

Q: ma krinu le za'i no lo tigni be lo nu cinse cu speni
A: .i ty du single

"Why are no sex entertainers married?" "Because they are stage-screwers"
(playing on the similarity to the lojban word "single" (which would read to a lojbanist as a short form of "tsina gletu" (stage/platform+to perform a sex act)) to the English word)

[okay, Snick, you can open them again]
Of course, there are also lots of other types of wordplay, such as palindromes, tongue-twisters and and pangrams.