From cbmvax!uunet!chaos.cs.brandeis.edu!iad Sun Jun 16 07:29:49 1991 Return-Path: Date: Sun Jun 16 07:29:49 1991 From: "Ivan Derzhanski" Message-Id: <9106152026.AA13058@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Subject: The 20 new gismu Status: RO ... or which ones I dislike, and why. I have never used the English words "magenta" and "cyan", and I have only seen them in PC reference manuals (two of the screen colours), not in real life. Given that so many languages have no separate words for `blue' and `green', or special words for `purple' or `violet', and also given that it is so easy to build a tanru for a particular shade of any of the basic colours (whatever this may mean), I think that including these two words is quite inappropriate. It seems that I know much less about plants than I thought; in any case, I won't object against having a word for `hemp/hashish/marijuana', and one for `sorrelgrass/rhubarb/buckwheat', and one for `cassava/taro/yam/manioc/ tapioca', although I'm unlikely to ever use any of them. But I feel the policy of interviewing the same six source languages is not the best one for this case. What can one expect `tapioca' or `taro' to be called in e.g. Russian? Is the word for `sorghum' not going to be {sorgo}? I say, it'd better be. Non-Christian cultures don't care for godparents. It is hardly a good idea to equate them to aunts and uncles. What is a virtue? I agree that North and South America must have separate gismu, but I think it would be better to make some a priori ones: all natural languages use compounds to refer to the two continents, so again interviewing the six source languages won't be too useful. Ivan