Re: [lojban-beginners] Question about the beginning and future of Lojban

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 13 November 2010 07:41, Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ponies are not baby horses, they are a special breed of horses, actually a
> subspecies of what we generally refer to as "horses". The relation between
> "pony" and "horse" is about the same as between "terrier" and "dog". But
> rats and mice are scientifically speaking not the same species - mice are
> members of genus Mus (with 30 known subspecies), rats are members of genus
> Rattus (with 64 known subspecies), while ponies are the same species as
> other horses.

The "-cu" part of both "ratcu" and "smacu" is from Chinese "鼠", which
doesn't distinguish the two species. It refers more to
Muroidea/Muridae (the common superfamily/family of "rat" and "mouse").
Japanese has the same nomenclature with its "nezumi", which can be
written in the same Chinese character "鼠" and which doesn't
distinguish the two species. These two are expressed through
derivatives: in Japanese,

rat -- kuma nezumi
mouse -- hatsuka nezumi

and in Chinese,

rat -- 小鼠
mouse -- 大家鼠

Likewise in Vietnamese,

rat -- Chuột cống
mouse -- Chuột nhắt

("chuột" is again for both "rat" and "mouse" --
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chu%E1%BB%99t)

The native speakers of these major Asian languages may find the
"ratcu/smacu" distinction exotic and wonder over the lack of a common
root word for the two.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.