[lojban-beginners] Re: Dictionary

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

On Friday 27 April 2007 16:33, Jon "Top Hat" Jones wrote:
> So, I got this giant dictionary/thesaurus with entries for most of
> English, including major pronouns. It is my intention to use this to
> make an explicit Lojban-English dic., i.e. "zo'e klama zo'e ti" for
> "come", and to include the Lojban word for all English words, so
> problems like my recent use of "klama" because I could not find a word
> for "enter/arrive"(, see the zo'o thread for what I mean). However, I
> would need help in two areas: 1- people to help in the translating, 2-
> experienced Lojbanists to check for correctness. Also, for non-gismu I
> want to use tanru, with lujvo and fu'ivla suggestions listed
> afterward. For example, the ly. def. of T-Rex would be (tyrant type-of
> lizard t-o king (t-o dinosaur)). Any volunteers?

I think the place to put Lojban definitions of words in other languages is the 
Lojban Wiktionary. I just added "red" (http://jbo.wiktionary.org/wiki/red). 
There isn't much there yet, but it's there waiting. Definitions of Lojban 
words belong in jbovlaste (of course you can also enter them in Wiktionary).

Words don't always correspond neatly to words in other languages. 
Taking "come" as an example, in English "come" and "go" are distinguished by 
whether the direction is toward or away from something. In Hebrew "ba'" 
and "tse'" are distinguished by whether one is entering or leaving an 
enclosed area, and "lekh" is "go" in general. Lojban has "klama" for "go" in 
general, and can use "barkla" and "nerkla" for "tse'" and "ba'", 
and "tolcliva" for "arrive".

I would not define "T. rex" with a lujvo. "Flatfish" yes (mlafi'e), but 
at "mlafi'e" I'd put a definition written out. All words for types of animals 
or plants (except "remna", but I think it ought to have an x2) have a place 
for the species, genus, variety, etc. If you want to name a species, use it 
(e.g. "bakyjba la xunre" for "cranberry").

Pierre