From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Jun 07 13:31:14 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:31:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MDP1N-0004hH-3k for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:31:14 -0700 Received: from mail-gx0-f207.google.com ([209.85.217.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MDP1E-0004fm-55 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:31:12 -0700 Received: by gxk3 with SMTP id 3so9639313gxk.10 for ; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:30:58 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=SVxM7/+CQeuDUlF4YWaLERzipx4ARrSpoeGXXG3p37k=; b=TkRh2sJ/aOyjUC74AeEzut6Z0jf0UhdeoWgBAtR3GxTvmiPhlQN2Ok+ZMAL5a2mpwj H571sP7DVuX04FQZ4rBEO9NJkxaC4d8nJfyFLSVzgngJEe+plJfsWuXF1qI2Byy57unh ZpLLz7wHXki0w6swXY/FBK0Z5NFYRXyvPK/mQ= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=J5Mclh+Da8GwoQwlL1ob/L51Vmzv0w/eG90i+e+PdwcUpLXKT2nrro7D5lWiRj/Lua Z4B8Xqe1BaKn4RwQxDcA2Q6X8EgZEQBV/01wQV6ufxKxAA/5eHk1Bx4O7LfcX8skEi8Z kqQEmVU1CMmM4tDW5imp3PMjsrwz+UGw8Doww= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.35.65 with SMTP id o1mr1528404ibd.7.1244406657369; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:30:57 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <5715b9300905301157g37c96bfbq96b3142d1761f081@mail.gmail.com> References: <5715b9300905301157g37c96bfbq96b3142d1761f081@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 16:30:57 -0400 Message-ID: <425e4ac20906071330x49809837xf7d8079eff0afaf3@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban] Re: sel ter vel xel From: Stela Selckiku To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-archive-position: 15651 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: selckiku@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Luke Bergen wrote: > Is it still completely out of the question to change just one little rafsi > so we can have 100% consistency instead of 99.9% consistency? If you think that changing any small number of things will make Lojban 100% consistent, you have a lot to learn about Lojban. :) > I just picture teaching my kids lojban and them saying "but dad, you said > that there are no exceptions toe the rules in lojban, why is the rafsi of > 'te' 'ter' when all the others are just themselves plus 'l'?". There's no rules you can learn to generate rafsi, I'm afraid. You have to memorize the rafsi. Some of them are sort of like the gismu, some are sort of like cmavo, some are pulled out of someone's ass. That's about all the structure you're going to find to it. > I know it's a cosmetic thing but it does kind of stick in my head like a > thorn ya' know?  "sel, ter, vel, xel".  Blech. OK look, I'm probably just rationalizing, but here's how I think about it. First, leave "vel" and "xel" out of it. Quick, what's the first lujvo that comes to mind with "vel" or "xel"? The first one that comes to my mind is: A complete blank. None at all. If I think for a while I can remember occasionally seeing "velsku" and "xelkla". But they're rare enough that it doesn't matter much at all what they sound like. It's the complete opposite with "sel". It's hard to find lujvo that don't have "sel". People all the time refer to second place things as "sel" + the shortest rafsi they can find-- selkla, selsku, selcme. Those words are basically an accented "sel" with a few sounds tacked on the end that tell you what you're even talking about. In between we have "ter", which is much less common than "sel", but much more common than "vel" and "xel". We've already got an excess of "sel" all over the place, putting the language in danger of having everything sound the same, so I find it a relief that there's a little bit of a different sound to "ter" in there. Obviously it's not perfect spartan efficiency that to say the x2 and x3 of cmene we can say se cmene, selcmene, or selcme and te cmene, tercmene, or tercme. But Lojban is not logical in the old dry way of the philosophical languages, organizing everything into perfect rows. It turns out that a little bit of messiness, a little bit of diversity is necessary in order for a language to be practically useful. It might seem more orderly to have all the conversion rafsi sound the same, but I think it is more practical and aesthetic to hear and write a diversity of sounds. People complain all the time about the complexity and quirkiness of Lojban's way of forming words, but there have been countless projects over centuries which have tried to invent logical orderly word-formation processes, and most of them are astoundingly ugly. There's a reason, though perhaps an illogical one, why Lojban's quirky lujvo succeeded where Ro's sterile efficiency failed. Of course it's easier to think of a simpler way for rafsi to go together. It's simple to just make everything even blocks, for instance. Then it's easy to split everything apart, because it's all the same. In Lojban everything is not all the same-- it's a quirky, weird little language. That is why it's the first logical language which so many speakers have come to love. mu'o mi'e la stela se ckiku mi'e la .telselkik. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.