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Some Lojbanists have called each other names using doi, the vocative particle. So they say "doi bakni", which means "Cow!" (as in "Oh, cow! I'm talking to you!"). The intended meaning is, of course, "You cow!", but it is not known for sure whether doi can be used that way. A theory is, that if there are five people and a cow in the room, and one of them says "doi bakni", the rest of the four people would be bound to believe she had gone crazy and started to talk to the cow. If the only living things in that room were those five people, they couldn't be sure who she were talking to (unless some of them, previously, had been nick-named "Cow").
Let's stick with this example for a little bit more. There still is this guy we sincerely hate, and we want to call him a cow. We could of course say "do bakni" ("You are a cow."), but Lojban being a logical language, with no room for metaphors, the sentence would be a lie (unless the insultee is actually, in a strict, biological sense, a bovine).
The approach I recommend (for some, but not all cases), is using the words simsa, which means "similar" or "like". We would say "do simsa lo'e bakni", which means "You are like a typical cow" (we could have chosen other articles here, but for obscure, technical reasons, these are not so useful in these case). The property the insultee and the typical cow has in common, is left unspecified. Perhaps it is the intelligence (very insulting), or the capability of producing milk (not so insulting) or the size of the tongue (ridiculous).
You could also use simlu, which means "appear" or "seem". You could say "do simlu le ka bakni". It means "You look like a cow", "You behave like a cow", or "You seem to be a cow".
Substitute any brivla for the word "bakni" in these examples. (If you don't know what a brivla is, check with the grammar).
This is a grammar lesson in Lojban. See! We are known world-wide.
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brivla: any word that can state a relationship among several objects or concepts, and thus be the core word in a Lojban bridi -- a "predicate word"
brivla are in the main gismu, lujvo and fu'ivla. A few cmavo can also behave as brivla.
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As noted above, these words state a relationship, and not an entire bridi, so a better word is ?selbrivla, i.e. valsi lo selbri (a word which means a selbri).
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Why isn't it brivo? If vo was a rafsi for valsi for purposes of making a few new gismu (cmavo = cmalu valsi, lujvo = pluja valsi), why not for this one?
. Although I don't think my family would get behind it -- they're all picky about putting tomato in stuff. Can't tell you how many times I've heard this from DD: "Well, I'd like it if it didn't have tomatoes/onion/squash/peppers/pig's eyeballs in it". Picky picky picky.
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