From rspeer@MIT.EDU Fri Sep 17 10:49:43 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:49:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu ([18.7.21.83]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.34) id 1C8MrW-0006Ld-6F for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:49:34 -0700 Received: from central-city-carrier-station.mit.edu (CENTRAL-CITY-CARRIER-STATION.MIT.EDU [18.7.7.72]) by pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu (8.12.4/8.9.2) with ESMTP id i8HHnVEa010819 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:49:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from melbourne-city-street.mit.edu (MELBOURNE-CITY-STREET.MIT.EDU [18.7.21.86]) by central-city-carrier-station.mit.edu (8.12.4/8.9.2) with ESMTP id i8HHnUex028980 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:49:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from torg.mit.edu (TORG.MIT.EDU [18.208.0.57]) ) by melbourne-city-street.mit.edu (8.12.4/8.12.4) with ESMTP id i8HHnTx1013103 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:49:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from rob by torg.mit.edu with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1C8Mru-0002Vm-00 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:49:58 -0400 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:49:58 -0400 From: Rob Speer To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: zo malglico Message-ID: <20040917174958.GD9508@mit.edu> Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040523i X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.42 X-archive-position: 8619 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rspeer@MIT.EDU Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 12:03:44PM -0500, Adam D. Lopresto wrote: > .i ki'u ma zo malglico .enai zo malgli co'e (If I had time to reply in Lojban, I would) For one thing, people often prefer sub-"optimal" forms of lujvo. This is often just for consistency; for example, the lujvo scoring algorithm says that the word for "better" should be "xauzma", but everyone says "xagmau" due to the familiarity of the -mau ending. (This is also because the lujvo scoring algorithm kinda sucks, especially when it thinks people like to pronounce diphthong+r.) Generally, I think that there's nothing wrong with leaving lujvo made from standard components, where their meaning is supposed to be understood from their parts, in expanded form, like mal+bangu or brody+gau. The frequently used ones can then be squished to the optimal form. Of course, that _should_ make "malglico" into "malgli". So the other explanation is bloody-minded tradition, the same reason that people say "sumti tcita" even though it's less precise and sounds worse than "sumtcita". -- Rob Speer