From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Nov 10 00:02:00 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:02:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GiRKq-0008Mb-2c for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:02:00 -0800 Received: from eastrmmtao05.cox.net ([68.230.240.34]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GiRKj-0008MT-MH for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:01:59 -0800 Received: from eastrmimpo01.cox.net ([68.1.16.119]) by eastrmmtao05.cox.net (InterMail vM.6.01.06.03 201-2131-130-104-20060516) with ESMTP id <20061110080156.SEBY18065.eastrmmtao05.cox.net@eastrmimpo01.cox.net> for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:01:56 -0500 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo01.cox.net with bizsmtp id kw1D1V00K3y5FKc0000000; Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:01:15 -0500 Message-ID: <45543183.3010606@lojban.org> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:00:03 -0500 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: baxso References: <4553BE58.1040208@lojban.org> <6fdb45540611092243t28b9750byd28762a118533347@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <6fdb45540611092243t28b9750byd28762a118533347@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 3673 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Michael wrote: > During the course of history contries appear and disappear, fuse > together and spread apart. > Federations, empires and unions arise. Shouldn't Lojban use cmene for > countries and their aspects? Yes and no. But JCB argued that Zipf's Law required the most commonly used words and expressions to be shortened, and therefore assigned gismu to a haphazard collection of languages/cultures/people (Loglan uses three different gismu differing only in the final letter for these, an inconsistency in the language rules). To systematize things while making minimal change, I used the 12 most spoken languages, and the major countries in which those languages are natively spoken, and then added Latin, Greek and Hebrew because they were classically important. Bahasa Malay/Indonesian is one of the 12. The intent was that other "culture words" would be created as needed using the fu'ivla rules, under which cmene are first made, and then if usage warrants, a type III fu'ivla (with a semantic affix), and then eventually a type IV fu'ivla with no affix. Later, in response to demand, we came up with the concept of a particular fu'ivla form that could experimentally be made into lujvo. > I mean human, air, earth, trees animals > and other things will exist (well, not forever, but at least as long > as lojban is useful to people;) ), but countries undergo changes. > Countries change their names, cultures etc. Ancient Egyption culture > and language has nothing to do with modern. Roman empire turned into > modern Italy. The latter is arguable. Latin turned into the Romance languages, and indeed, I have proposed using "neo-Latin" as the basis for a lujvo for the Romance language family. The Roman empire split, and the surviving eastern empire outlasted the fall of Rome. > The gismo reflecting some specific ountry or a nation > may need modification, and the older version would be necessary to be > able to speak about the former country. Think of Yugoslavia and its > republics. Would you define something Yugoslavian as Macedonian and > vice versa? Or partialy. It's complicated. We've already had to deal with this, in that the referent of softo arguably doesn't exist any more. But the word is still useful for discussion of history and culture and will continue to be, indefinitely. lojbab