From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Aug 08 12:30:49 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:30:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IIrF3-00068G-7q for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:30:49 -0700 Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com ([64.233.182.188]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IIrEz-000688-VA for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:30:48 -0700 Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id 4so62195nfv for ; Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:30:44 -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:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=U1dOLVfJunP7mq/RAURV4yemcVmLOavsOrGNwz5biXuuleSqmaiRO5O1GToNvQpud7R3b3Tf4G9JQdjNemmfeZHkkYvmoS3b/qo457I41c6/4HW9pO9SFzsJ2k8igiT0efFq3mIK1UdGk46+1kP0lIXur2x+Izro3/PRv7+fgak= 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:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=lDBcx1fY8gbezvZgBMVsMXGBJzfzTjTVLmTTd/4k725Uqw5DPx93UpIXhlwW6ZstFxzEDkRWwGHQf2LuCiqqyp91rasUbPWnZEKD1hTnpqLTpi5dbDzWXW3QpYSrcHlL3D5WRMLOtCm6FiP6zAFF/2zRD3pAeGH2CcKdlrlWQKQ= Received: by 10.86.100.7 with SMTP id x7mr929571fgb.1186601443781; Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:30:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.86.86.13 with HTTP; Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:30:43 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <925d17560708081230r311267c9leee11ce58ee4da08@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 16:30:43 -0300 From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?=" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: anti-Zipfian gismu rant In-Reply-To: <46C10802@webmail.bcpl.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <46C10802@webmail.bcpl.net> X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5314 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jjllambias@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On 8/8/07, turnip wrote: > > Old Italian squirrels are stupid, but zebras are smart. > loi tolci'o natmritaliano bo ritcyratcu cu tolmencre .iki'u xirmrxipotigre cu > mencre. > > The Algerian gymnast's cassava is 10^-18 cubits long. > le le jerxo zajba ku samcu cu xatsi gutci. > > So how come we have short words (gismu) for the latter set, but very long > words for the former set? You could have used {bebna} for "stupid". {natmritaliano} is not type-3. Type-3 would be {natmrxitaliano}. There is no reasonable explanation for why there is an official gismu {jerxo} but no {talno}. I use the unofficial {talno} for "Italian". {tolci'o} and {mencre} don't seem to be particularly long. {ricyratcu} does not strike me as too long for "squirrel" either, and you could have used {tirxyxi'a} for "zebra". We have {xatsi} because it corresponds to an SI prefix, I don't see a problem with that. We have {gutci} because the language designers were from the US. There does not seem to be any other sensible explanation for having non-SI units among the gismu. {samcu} is probably part of some gismu group or other that wouldn't be complete without it, but I don't know much about that. {zajba} is something of a mystery. 1987 was not an Olympic Games year, I wonder if {zajba} wasn't perhaps added in 1988... Then again, I notice that the Pan American games were held in Indianapolis in 1987 (this year they were in Rio de Janeiro), which could perhaps help explain it. mu'o mi'e xorxes