[lojban-beginners] Re: anti-Zipfian gismu rant

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday 09 August 2007 14:09, turnip wrote:
>   But you _do_ have a gismu for llama -- kumte.... see??   There's more
> than 500,000,000 raccoons in the world (and yes, mostly concentrated in
> North America, but ~1 million in Germany's forest, and also in Asia and
> South America), and about 25 million camels, alpacas, llamas, and vicunas
> combined. So again, who makes the decision on where to split the hairs
> (hares? ;-) ) ? (Personally, I don't think there should be a gismu for
> raccoon, but I do think there should be for rodent).

Lojban has two gismu for kinds of rodents but none for rodent in general, two 
for galliforms and two for anseriforms but none for any other order or more 
specific taxon of bird, two for the genus Canis and one for foxes. This has 
often made me hesitate when coining a word for some animal.
*African hunting dog (Lycaon pictus): gerku je'i labno? (gernlikaone)
*Peacock: jipci je'i xruki? (skaxruki)
*Swan: datka je'i gunse? (nebdatka, but I think someone else used gunse)

>   (And I wouldn't mind a Vietnamese gismu, either, for that matter)

I say {vietnama}.

> >For that matter, if one of the people from the island south of Australia
> >was speaking in his language, he might be upset to find the English
> >translation for his cubit-long animal puppet is "sesquipedalian
> >Tasmanian devil puppet", which might be expressed rather briefly in the
> >native language.
>
>   Could be, but English doesn't claim cultural neutrality, or a vocabulary
> built on international basic concepts.  Lojban does.
>
>   For example, I asked some Israelis how to say "blueberry" in Hebrew. 
> None of them could think of it, because it only exists as foreign import
> there.

And for "blueberry" I say {blanu bakyjba} or {zirpu bakyjba}. (One is the 
bleuet and the other the myrtille, but don't ask me to tell them apart.) 
{bakyjba} also includes cranberries.

Pierre