User talk:Gleki/deleted

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Revision as of 17:28, 3 November 2019 by Iesk (talk | contribs)
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When we start a noun with le (instead of lo or numbers) we refer to nouns that have just been mentioned. They are translated to English as he, she or by using the article the.

lo fetsi = females lo nakni = males lo prenu = people le fetsi = she, the female le nakni = he, the male le prenu = he or she, the person (gender is not known or not important)

If several nouns can match then the last one is used:

pa prenu cu viska pa fetsi i le fetsi cu melbi One person sees a female. She (the female) is beautiful.

Is this really an even somewhat common (by Lojban standards) way of talking? It seems very weird to me. First of all, "le fetsi" is quite verbose. Secondly, and more to the point, it seems randomly specific. As in, the "femaleness" of the subject is probably not relevant to the conversation. There are of course contexts in which it is, but why not "le cmalu" or "le drata" or whatever? In a Gricean sense, the listener will wonder what's up with the subjects gender. mu'o mi'e .iesk. 15:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

In other (hopefully clearer) words: "le fetsi" should not be advertised as a translation/equivalent of English "she". It is of course hard to tell with Lojban, but the pragmatical implications are very different. Gender is hard-coded into the English pronoun (as is number, btw), whereas it takes a voluntary effort by the Lojban speaker to bring up the predication of "being female". (I guess in the old days this would have been labelled malglico.)
I'm unfortunately quite out of the loop, but I am optimistic that this really isn't normal Lojban usage, except by one very productive speaker. :) mu'o mi'e .iesk. 17:28, 3 November 2019 (UTC)