From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Jul 20 16:31:44 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:31:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MT2Kd-0003ge-KT for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:31:43 -0700 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.242]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MT2Ka-0003gS-9t for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:31:43 -0700 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id d40so4083324and.1 for ; Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:31:38 -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=W9eMVjaou+tLFceTL2AgGRt9z059MmldAFXchnvQvhw=; b=EcMjXbXioET8srOkGDh6WO0eAbS7Ys1WRDbcW2kLk9qZsKkS61KHiNE4RYEx54t/4J NlBP+3Zr4gCqWpZw3A1maybRxLB15k2w5gcMAwakW3WnOMfKiaQ1pQB/zJDul2ki/VrP 1N61OhJL0R+MoYiaOL5J8B7bRkC2rI9gIIqkc= 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=t3xiXDxJFuRIcdTZipDuqc52GRUIpP8rN8zdhUI0y+MW6Hz9xMSJQQ+4eA2/EPKJcU jJB9eI+nJ5FpJBwXbWTl5hHsdXN4ChNsvsE/B3aIp+K2Cw8xPisVvPkl6c4eN44HAzPd a+5EQjLRqrwr/7EiIxI8S/9dDB16knxKySBKU= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.11.130 with SMTP id t2mr449226ibt.51.1248132698533; Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:31:38 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <126025.43169.qm@web50408.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <126025.43169.qm@web50408.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:31:38 -0400 Message-ID: <425e4ac20907201631o31437b32l43c2a473ff5c9a43@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban] Re: Philosophical differences. From: Stela Selckiku To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-archive-position: 15781 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 mi'e la selckiku On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Lindar Greenwood wrote: > > 1. vlagi I wouldn't have made a gismu for vlagi, not because vlagi aren't important, but because it's not especially productive of lujvo. That's a much deeper sin of the gismu list: It completely conflates the purposes of creating a basic vocabulary and creating a library of combining forms, and thus does both terribly. The word exists though, not just in old vocabulary lists but in a lot of human brains. This conversation is only spreading it to more. I don't see how you could wage a successful campaign against it. > There is absolutely no way to describe "sleepy", There's no way to get to much of anything worthwhile by uncolored, arithmatic addition of gismu meanings. That's why lujvo are allowed to have their own characters, derived from nowhere except whim. Lujvo have new meanings. Their constituent gismu are mnenomic hints to that meaning, or vague guideposts to the uninitiated. The full meaning is not derivable from them. Lojban already has various words, "tatpi" and "siptcu" and "sipydji" and so forth, which could translate "sleepy" in various senses. Based on the usage I've seen, the word which would usually most closely translate "sleepy" would be "sipydji"-- which I agree relates somewhat strangely to "djica", but on the other hand it is a gorgeous *sounding* word, which I would guess factors into its popularity. It's true of course that the gismu don't necessarily provide a very *good* set of mnenomics. There could be a lot more choices than -tcu and -dji, but instead what we have is a lot of words for household objects and body parts and wtf-ever. What I propose broadly to respond to this (utterly unfixable) overall situation is what I have called "cimjvo", cilmo zei lujvo, moist lujvo, lujvo which are wet with meaning, or to put it more concretely: lujvo with an elided "-pev-". (The lujvo "cimjvo" is of course self-describing, for instance.) I think it would be a good idea to use the flavored words we have for various specific needs, like taske and xagji, as additional bases for families of words about wanting and needing. We don't need a full family of lujvo for different kinds of actual non-metaphorical thirst! In theory that sounds cool, but I am having trouble even thinking of more than one type of thirst. Um za'e mlitaske vs za'e tcetaske, but that hardly counts. Uh how about za'e xaltaske. I'm a little za'e jisrytaske right now?! So, as I've just demonstrated, either -taske can be metaphorical, or it's only for making words that are very silly. :) > 3. Cultural gismu. > > Just fix it already. The gismu can't be scrubbed out of existence. It's not like we can so thoroughly get rid of "merko" that we could go ahead and make a new word "merko" that means something else. But we could make them less used, if there were well-known cultural fu'ivla for the cultures we usually use gismu for. I still use "merko" because I don't know of any potential replacements that anyone would recognize. I'm willing to champion new cultural fu'ivla, if someone comes up with good ones, but it will take some time. Fighting the established gismu when there's not yet a replacement won't help at all. > 4. Computer words. > > Face it, we're pretty much all huge nerds. We need words for "window", > "website", "internet", "software", "hardware", and various other things. We > have computer and monitor, but not much else, and if we are to put this > language into full use as quickly as possible, I see this as a dire > necessity over most anything else. There have been a lot of words for internet. I think the ones I've seen most often are probably "samseltcana" (clear enough, but I'd think it would mean "network" in general) and "samclupa" (which seems really weird to me, but it's out there). There are some old words for website that I forget. Oh I remember an old fu'ivla for web, "skamrxuebe" or something. There's a few words about programming, like sampla, samselpla, sambau. Recently in a conversation I had with Daniel one of us came up with "samsmacu", mouse. Of course we could use a lot more. What you got? Hit us! :) mu'o 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.