From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jun 04 09:15:27 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:15:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MCFbC-0004GZ-NL for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:15:27 -0700 Received: from mail-gx0-f224.google.com ([209.85.217.224]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MCFb7-0004En-Dz for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:15:26 -0700 Received: by gxk24 with SMTP id 24so3733892gxk.10 for ; Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:15:15 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=U8Po5osax8HdEuTv/EIIgussZb5hqi782oOWDR7GUTw=; b=jEaUdoUp2sFZHXgYCLlfHAiwDTUDTdzTlfknvuX+fFuh0j/MLsYZhl9e7kIF9Ypmkn pggic4MaZeY3lYq7m7DOlQhXEtg7JsoX16xdyB4ytEyu6Zc98b1PmnFDe5PbEnFCbyty 7Uc6P24gCKPZRGCUwRknjB0HKo09mwJQggY/0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=FLCJcFjK2Pz6KirW/HeTIWC8jF1oCLJnk0n9kH/MOzqY8X7OlDmZXC9vAu5dAfefld jLFiETaEEwcf/BGQxFR5oiFO5nXkOKsyB+j2JKUTWYv7i1eGVD8hFYtJr4/P8O3sAwh8 hXpxgeUlSWWduwZLvnX4BwkBqbQYi59A3wwT0= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.151.107.8 with SMTP id j8mr3874875ybm.98.1244132115071; Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:15:15 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <925d17560906011204t16b3e688i575816c47af3bfdb@mail.gmail.com> References: <4de8c3930906011038w26ecef60hba19650d3e6e8142@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560906011204t16b3e688i575816c47af3bfdb@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:15:15 -0400 Message-ID: <96f789a60906040915v580c145j4dcae4a23b88ccbd@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: bu denpa From: Michael Turniansky To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-archive-position: 1769 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mturniansky@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners 2009/6/1 Jorge Llambías : > On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 2:38 PM, tijlan wrote: >> Why "denpa bu" instead of "bu denpa", which to me would make more >> sense, to the extent that it would be consistent with "zo denpa"? > > The "names" of consonants are by, cy, dy,..., zy. The natural names > for vowels (.a, .e, .i, .o, .u) were already taken by the time lerfu > were defined (Lojban being "the logical language", the logical > connectives were more or less the first words to be defined, and the > shortest possible words were immediately grabbed.) So, the vowels > became .abu, .ebu, .ibu, .obu, .ubu so that they begin with the same > letter they name, like the consonants, and then the -bu suffix was > generalized to apply to any word. (I don't swear this is exactly how > it happened, but it's probably close.) > In 1975 Loglan, there were a set of 8 suffixes to correspond to each combination of {capital/lowercase} {Latin/Greek} {consonant/vowel}. Thus, sai was capital "S", sei was lowercase "s", sao was capital sigma, seo was lowercase sigma. The Latin uppercase suffix was -ma, and so forth. bu is probably holdover/remnant from that system. --gejyspa