From: Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: compasss directions
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:55:20 -0500
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On Friday 16 March 2007 14:43, Turniansky, Michael wrote:
>   I'm sure this has been discussed before, but is there any reason why
> the spatial tenses for north, east, south, and west   bear no
> resemblance to the gismu for the same?  (With the possible exception of
> be'a/berti).

The gismu for directions were made, like most gismu, by mashing together words 
from six languages with a computer program. Three of them came up with the 
same first letter. (The 's' of {snanu} is from the initial of 
English "south", the initial 'st' of {stuna} and {stici} is from the end of 
the English words, and the initial 'b' of {berti} is from Chinese "bei".) 
Furthermore, two of the short rafsi begin with 's'. To avoid confusion in 
abbreviations for directions, the cmavo were chosen to begin with four 
different letters. See 
http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/wiki/boxing%20the%20compass .

phma