From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun May 27 06:29:54 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HsIoj-0000Qm-9d for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:54 -0700 Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com ([66.249.82.224]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HsIog-0000Qf-MZ for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:52 -0700 Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id t11so913009wxc for ; Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:49 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; b=chs+iFGfCh7jgxn88Yzm2JDsuK69YmCbBCg70EPtm0TuIvoVEUAayW/ye1sm1sRwFLJeIRqmvrpj/OjdPSYsuXYXR4mMMkqcAa55jwIPZCNJBxeXePa1gwgDQD6d6/t3RX8eySg1tngGey0VithGUa1RI2kS/O/IjaNdCpOznu4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; b=czlOo8B5jdfrRwAZvWw/b8PgN83lLN9RFk3A9EsNh1Bp//yylRd10/CwVERBozB1RvNm30JnbQ4nCX3zB5I2UJsx/ePlgrTr87amL/UBISYdjsUnyHftY/Scmo8h4w+uchEkZOZyds1xL76WL6HGhZrCLh1kPK1zVRtMHkL9qlM= Received: by 10.70.109.12 with SMTP id h12mr6837927wxc.1180272589496; Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.9.19 with HTTP; Sun, 27 May 2007 06:29:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <2f91285f0705270629x517fb2a7qdfc0acfbab65a136@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 14:29:49 +0100 From: "Vid Sintef" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: dicussions about basic vocabulary In-Reply-To: <200705250019.05134.nazgjunk@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_98493_3782268.1180272589427" References: <1180044114.46560b52223fd@ssl0.ovh.net> <200705250019.05134.nazgjunk@gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: 0.1 X-Spam-Score-Int: 1 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4728 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: picos.picos@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners ------=_Part_98493_3782268.1180272589427 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline It's important to remember that Lojban is an engineered language. Its lexicon has been designed to be simple yet highly potential for further making up words so that the learners don't need a thousand-paged dictionary to expand their own lexical horizon. The number of the root words in Lojban is relatively adequate. I have printed them out for myself. 22 pages. Not so many. They are already "basic" in nature. Toki Pona is even simpler than Lojban but therefore has to rely heavily on longer compound words to say even something like "ear" (BTW "ear" and "anus" share the word "lupa" because they share the property "hole"!), and eventually it becomes so wordy and impracticable if you do describe any complex matters. Martin's project can be viewed as a further condensed list of what are already basic words. And I'm willing to support it. But there's a thing I've noted about the criterion of the listing: It looks somewhat stereotypic and not sufficiently accommodating the actual needs of Lojban beginners. For example, I would've liked to know what the word for "password" rather than "passport". There's probably no single immigration officer in any country who would ask you in Lojban to produce a proof of your nationality, but there could exist web sites which would ask you in Lojban to enter your password. Likewise, the word for "the internet" would probably be more useful than "radio" in Lojbanistan, or "web page" rather than "book", "button (to click)" rather than "pen". If we consider the obvious possibility that Lojbanistan is going to further develop with its hub being primarily online collective communications (e.g. lojban.org, Wikipedia), we might as well prioritize those internet-related vocabularies so that the beginners can quickly adapt, from the very early stage of learning, to the most active space of the community. (Some of the terms are suggested on http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban+web-related+terminology&bl ) Vid ------=_Part_98493_3782268.1180272589427 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline It's important to remember that Lojban is an engineered language. Its lexicon has been designed to be simple yet highly potential for further making up words so that the learners don't need a thousand-paged dictionary to expand their own lexical horizon. The number of the root words in Lojban is relatively adequate. I have printed them out for myself. 22 pages. Not so many. They are already "basic" in nature. Toki Pona is even simpler than Lojban but therefore has to rely heavily on longer compound words to say even something like "ear" (BTW "ear" and "anus" share the word "lupa" because they share the property "hole"!), and eventually it becomes so wordy and impracticable if you do describe any complex matters.

Martin's project can be viewed as a further condensed list of what are already basic words. And I'm willing to support it. But there's a thing I've noted about the criterion of the listing: It looks somewhat stereotypic and not sufficiently accommodating the actual needs of Lojban beginners. For example, I would've liked to know what the word for "password" rather than "passport". There's probably no single immigration officer in any country who would ask you in Lojban to produce a proof of your nationality, but there could exist web sites which would ask you in Lojban to enter your password. Likewise, the word for "the internet" would probably be more useful than "radio" in Lojbanistan, or "web page" rather than "book", "button (to click)" rather than "pen".

If we consider the obvious possibility that Lojbanistan is going to further develop with its hub being primarily online collective communications (e.g. lojban.org, Wikipedia), we might as well prioritize those internet-related vocabularies so that the beginners can quickly adapt, from the very early stage of learning, to the most active space of the community. (Some of the terms are suggested on  http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban+web-related+terminology&bl)


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