[lojban-beginners] Re: geodesic dome

["Jared Angell" <angell.jared@gmail.com>]

Forgive me if before I learn a language I want to test the waters to make sure that it is speakable.

On 10/26/07, Penguino < spheniscine@gmail.com> wrote:

Seriously Jared, could you please lose some of that attitude? You have barely learned the language, and yet you come in barging with all these opinions about it, lunging at those who are trying to help you just because they couldn't come up with a word for "geodesic dome" within 24 hours. I bet similar problems also exist for languages that don't freely use borrowings, e.g. Chinese; only that Chinese has a lot more characters than Lojban has gismu. At least there exist systems in Lojban where borrowings can be used if you need a word now.

That said perhaps it would be a good idea to calque lujvo from Chinese; it makes etymology explicit, unlike English, and part of the "how can we define such-and-such a concept" work would already have been done. For example, "dome" is 圆屋顶, or literally "round roof". Based on this, we can pick the words bolci (sphere), and drudi (roof), and picking the appropriate rafsi, we get boldru. Presumably we don't need to specify that it's a half sphere, as a full sphere would not make a very practical roof shape. zo'o

Geodesic is a little more difficult - my dictionary gives 测地线 for "geodesic line". 地 = ground, 线 = line, but 测 is a new word to me. The dictionary gives for 测:
1. side
2. to lean
3. to survey
4. to measure
5. conjecture

Obviously quite an ambiguous word.

-- 
Jared

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