Message-Id: <199601202111.QAA02244@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Thu, 18 Jan 1996 00:22:32 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: sera'aku SNU: ki'e doi skot.
To: John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 2768

That is NOT cheating, becuase it is NOT defining the culture as a subset of
another culture.  That is NOT the definition of a lujvo, which can involve
a variety of kinds of modifications besides restirctive subset.

In any event, the implication is that IF one were going to use "west-skoto",
one should also use "north-skoto" or "east-skoto" for the Scottish culture,
because "skoto" has been broadened by the usage to include the other celtic
cultures: welsh, cornish as well (don't ask me to define a lujvo for them,
as I am not all that up on the celtic divisions.)

Ivan's opinion (and I should let him speak for himself) is that cultures
should all be referenced by the longwinded la'o quotes of non-Lojban culture
names.  You see - he, and many others do not see brevity as the soul of
Lojban %^).

>I find it difficult to envisage the
>definition of an entire culture as a su'oremei pagbu lujvo.

Why not?  We define "jegvo" for all of judeo-muslo-christianity, "baxso"
for Malay-Indonesian, "glico" for all English speaking cultures 9and only some
of them have their own separate gismu), "ropno" for European cultures.
Since there is explicitly NO "hierarchy" that says that a word or a culture
is "better" or "more important" because it is a gismu instead of a lujvo
and indeed the whole point of having gismu with rafsi is so that they can
usefully be made into lujvo - it is VERY Lojbanic to make lujvo-cultural-gismu.
Or maybe I should say lujvo cultural brivla.

What I am hearing is that somehow people have the idea that lujvo are 2nd
class words, and indeed I get the sense that people consider a fu'ivla even
violating the rules like *xorvo to be superior to a lujvo.  This is directly
counter to the design philsophy of the language which considers all fu'ivla to
be low-quality words, and a good lujvo to be a very Lojbanic thing.

There is also the undercurrent, which is getting me nervous - that all words
need to be 2 or 3 syllables.

In Lojban this AIN'T gonna happen.  Lojban will need and have more words than
English in its full flowering, becuase of the one-word-per-meaning rule.
And because monosyllables are excluded from Lojban content words, as well
as the shortest of disyllables, Lojban content words are going to be
PREDOMINANTLY 3, 4, 5 or 6 syllables.  ideally Zipf will work to make it
possible to have the shortest words be the most common ones 9with use in
 lujvo-making on the part of gismu/rafsi being one element of "common"ness.

But I think we need to work hard to get used to the idea that 2 and 3 syllable
words are NOT a mark of beauty in the language, and especially of creative
beauty, because such words are NOT going to often be created, and SHOULD be
chosen for utilitarian rather than aesthetic reasons.

lojbab