💾 Archived View for thrig.me › blog › 2024 › 01 › 02 › kung-fu.gmi captured on 2024-05-26 at 15:12:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Kung Fu

"Kung fu" actually means something like hard (or bitter) work, so would include anything that requires dedication to master—the piano, vi, tea ceremonies, etc. Or is it just a bag slopped in swimming pool water, as far as ritual goes?

In lojban we might coin "nadgu'a" from "difficult" and "work", so therefore

    le do nadgu'a cu norxau

of which a literal translation runs like "your hard work sucks (or sucked or will suck)", for some unspecified thing.

    norxau  (lujvo) no'e xamgu
      $x_1$ is mediocre (in terms of benefit) for $x_2$ by standard $x_3$
      GLOSS mediocre (in terms of benefit)
      RAFSI nor xau
      NOTES See {no'e}, {xamgu}, {xlali}, {norcre}
      RELAT no'e norcre xamgu xlali

This is close in length to the English version, "your kung-fu is no good". But then again kung-fu movies have been known for bad dubs (and subtitles in three languages, filmed from within a movie theater), and it may be important to uphold that tradition.

Alternatives are good to kick around, if anything for the practice. There is actually "dabytadji" for "fighting technique", so a more accurate insult might be:

    ga'i le do dabytadji cu xlali

or something like "[hauteur] your martial art is bad". This suggests variations such as "le do tirxyja'u tadji ku ruble" for "your tiger-claw method is weak". Contrasting pairs (tiger, weak) are a good touch? Do note that "not good" covers a range from "nothing special" all the way down to "wow, you're really terrible at this", which is a pretty big range to select from. Probably it's closer to "meh" than "mabla".

Relativity also needs some work, so one might use

    mi tsamau do le ka dabytadji

to indicate that one is stronger in the property of fighting technique. There's a key to these things. A typical response might run along the lines of

    mi ba rivbi le nunterji'a le ka mi sozytsani tadji

or "I will evade defeat through my nine-skies technique". This is sort of like Star Trek's technobabble, only with more heaven's jade and less flux capacitor. Next,

    do pu nadgu'a ja'e nai

is a bit strange (to me) as usually there's something that follows the "without result ..." cmavo-compound "ja'enai". It parses, at least. Maybe it reads something like "your past work, result none" but you'd need to find some other speakers of lojban to see if they agree on whether the phrase works, or is jarringly incomplete. More typical might be to imply the result has been nothing,

    do pu nadgu'a ja'e no da

but that would give the opponent a leg up to argue that "no da" is, in fact, too broad and then everybody would be

Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting

P.S. American municipal water tends to smell like a swimming pool. You can let it air out in jars covered with a coffee filter, which may let the chlorine out and not allow spiders to get in. Having a buffer of potable water might also be handy for various reasons.

P.P.S. I should use "!" more in vi; ":,}!sort" is a long "!}sort". Both mean "from here to the next paragraph, filter the lines through sort(1)", only the latter has fewer tricky keys. That-which-follows-! is a motion of some sort, so "}" a paragraph, "G" the end.