History: Levels of Politeness in Lojban

One can take a cue from Japanese (keigi) & label these attitudinals as follows:

ga'inaicai reverential
ga'inaisai humble & formal
ga'inairu'e formal
ga'icu'i polite
ga'iru'e plain
ga'isai blunt
ga'icai rude

(Note that iocai can be substituted for ga'inaicai ktp; & this
presumably distinguishes personal from social use of these signifiers. I.e. the ga'i-series is implicit ro'a & the .io-series is implicit ro'anai.)

• I disagree. ga'i is defined in relation to rank (note the word 'formal', above). Dilbert would address his boss as ga'inai of some sort, but would certainly not be using io. — mi'e noras.

One suggestion is to use the top level to address cevni, the second kesfange, larcu dacti, & lijda ralju; the third, minde remna; the middle one, remna drata; the fifth, tinbe remna; the sixth, skami, noryru'i, & danlu; & the last one, ti'ocpi, cinki, & spati.

Seems to me that ga'icu'i should be "plain", the midpoint between the two. --xod

Yeah, I agree. (My intent was for this to be the default level for strangers, which in most languages that recognize these distinctions is a tad formal. The next level below it, is familiarity.)

• A silly intent, Michael. If the level is unmarked and normal and default, you're not seen as making any extra effort to be polite. You're seen as just talking normally. So there will be a natural tendency towards 'inflation' of any politeness markers, which will drift up the scale. Better to make politeness higher up the scale to begin with. That's what these languages do: they may be polite by default, but the default is decidedly marked linguistically. — nitcion
  • Familiarity, 'tutoiement' (lazyjongau maybe?)...

And Michael, you can oracularly suggest all you want, but there's a fair few humans in this world I like to think of in ga'icai terms... (fu'e.iosai mi do tugni fu'o)