From maggie_lucy@yahoo.co.uk Fri Jul 23 09:21:12 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 23 Jul 2004 09:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from web25106.mail.ukl.yahoo.com ([217.12.10.54]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.32) id 1Bo2n3-0006tL-B3 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 23 Jul 2004 09:20:58 -0700 Message-ID: <20040723162026.58966.qmail@web25106.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Received: from [81.152.197.11] by web25106.mail.ukl.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:20:26 BST Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:20:26 +0100 (BST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Maggie=20Turner?= Subject: [lojban] Re: Projects To: lojban-list@lojban.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-archive-position: 8290 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: maggie_lucy@yahoo.co.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Philip Newton wrote: > On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:27:16 -0000, reverendzow wrote: > >>Lastly, a set of ideograms for gismu. > > > There've been a couple of attempts at this before; one of mine (based > on Japanese) is at http://shavian.org/lojban/gismu-jap.html , for > example. (At least one other is based on Chinese, IIRC). Not as > official projects, though; more as fun, as I understand it. > > >>This requires the potential to >>make a simple visual system for making lujvo, else the phonetic >>alphabet could be used for gismu and lujvo as well. > > > It would certainly need to allow people to differentiate between lujvo > and tanru; "glibau" is not the same as "glico bangu". (It *is* the > same as "gicybau" or "glicybangu", though, by definition, so one > notation could conceivably represent either.) > > >>For instance, what shall we call words that possess brivla? > > > What do you mean with that? How can a word possess a brivla? There are > words, some of which are Lojban words, some of which are brivla. > > >>I have come up with ka'eserafsi, although my construction may >>be flawed, > > > That falls apart into the three words "ka'e se rafsi". "da ka'e se > rafsi" seems to me to mean something like "X can be a word which has > rafsi". But only gismu and some cmavo have rafsi; brivla in general do > not. (The lujvo composed of "ka'e se rafsi" would be "ka'erselrafsi", > FWIW.) > > >>Similarly, it seems the selma'o are named >>after the most commonly used elemental cmavo, rather than a Lojban >>meaning of their function. > > > *nods* Those are conventional English names, though. > > I do not believe there are any official Lojban names for cmavo; > indeed, I seem to recall some saying that they hope that the Lojban > name for e.g. selma'o GOhA does not contain the word "go'a". > > >>The point is: it is quite likely that the vocabulary needs >>serious optimization/reform if widespread adoption of >>Lojban is to occur. > > > The point is: many people have put a lot of effort into learning > Lojban in its current form. Reforming or optimising would render that > effort largely useless. > It is also hard to see what reforms would be useful. It is true that there were glitches in the original gismu generation, largely because the lack of a native Chinese speaker lojbanist at the time meant that some of the Chinese vocabulary was incorrectly lojbanised, but this is a minor issue; the gismu "hooks" are meant to be aids to memorisation, not recognition. To give an example of where the process worked well, I can remember "cukta" easily because of Chinese "shu", English "book" and Arabic "kitap", but none of these would be any help if I hadn't seen the word before. There might also have been a case for giving English a higher weighting, given that the number of second-language English speakers is rising, and seems set to do so for the conceivable future, but as Philip points out, it's too late to start mucking around with the language for what would probably be very minor gains in learnability. The only reforms that would significantly increase ease of vocabulary learning would also, I think, break the morphology. If you want a language with easily recognisable vocabulary, you can't have such strict morphology, and if you want to go down that route, you may as well choose Esperanto, Interlingua or (God help us) Occidental. robin.tr ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com