Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110212116.AA03560@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Tue Oct 22 02:57:35 1991 Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: aphorisms & cultural gismu X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: And Rosta's message of Mon, 21 Oct 1991 18:31:53 +0000 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 22 02:57:35 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN And writes about aphorisms and cultural gismu. I'm not going to touch that aphorism, leastways not for now. As for cultural gismu, there was a long discussion about those a while back. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the choices made, but have come to accept them. One major point that needs to be made, though: And asks why "Canadian" is "kadno" and not "kando". As you pointed out, there is "kandi"=="dim". Note that no two gismu may differ only in their final vowel, as that would give them identical 4-letter rafsi (kand-). Moreoever, it is against the driving principle of lojban to say "nobody would ever think 'you're looking pale today' meant 'you're looking Canadian today'". We're trying to cook up an *unambiguous* language, rememner? That means that there's no way to confuse one statement for another (except in well-defined ways, e.g. the ambiguity of tanru, ellipsis, etc). If we allow that sort of confusion, we'd be no better off than English ("what color is that thing?" "pale" "I *know* it's a pail. What color is it?"--granted, bad grammar and dumb conversation). I'm sure somebody else will pick up on this and say it better than I can. ~mark