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[lojban-beginners] Re: dicussions about basic vocabulary



Martin, Robin knows that. He was not referring to the 1300 root words.
He was referring to the compound words. There are only about 8,000
defined words in the entire Lojban language right now. That's why he
said it's premature to narrow down the dictionary to 10,000 when we
only have 8,000 defined words.

When you say the vocabulary of Lojban is too rich for a beginner,
perhaps you are referring to the tens of millions of possible
combinations which have not yet been explored by anyone?

-Eppcott

On 5/24/07, m.kornig@sondal.net <m.kornig@sondal.net> wrote:
Oh, no! This is not what I mean, Robin.

I'm not worried about the root words, i.e. "gismu" and
"cmavo" (?). There seems to be consensus about these. And there
are only a few thousand of them, as you pointed out. This
should be relatively easy to learn. Well, some of them may
not even be in the 10000 word dictionary I have in mind.
Remember I want "everyday words". For instance, I think
that some of the gismu are a bit too general to be relevant
for everyday communication.

I'm rather worried about the huge number of combinations
and derivations! This is where I think there is a lack
of consensus among speakers. Some of these combinations
are realy difficult to tell apart. And everybody seems
to have their own preferences.

This is what is difficult to cope with for beginners.

So it's not a questions of Lojban being too poot in vocabulary.
On the contrary, I think Lojban is too rich (at least for a
beginner)!

Martin

Selon Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>:

> Saying "We should pare down all these conflicting possibilities to X
> simple ones instead" when we don't even *have* X conflicting
> possibilities to choose from seems rather premature.
>
> -Robin
>
> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 10:51:48PM +0200, m.kornig@sondal.net wrote:
> > Sorry, Robin. I don't see what you mean.
> >
> > Selon Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>:
> >
> > > On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 06:35:04PM +0200, m.kornig@sondal.net wrote:
> > > > Maybe a standard "imposed" dictionary of (say 10000) common
> > > > everyday words could solve this dilemma?
> > >
> > > First would should *have* 10 thousand words at all, don't you think?