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

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 8/8/07, turnip <turnip@bcpl.net> wrote:
>
> Old Italian squirrels are stupid, but zebras are smart.
> loi tolci'o natmritaliano bo ritcyratcu cu tolmencre .iki'u xirmrxipotigre cu
> mencre.
>
> The Algerian gymnast's cassava is 10^-18 cubits long.
> le le jerxo zajba ku samcu cu xatsi gutci.
>
>  So how come we have short words (gismu) for the latter set, but very long
> words for the former set?

You could have used {bebna} for "stupid".

{natmritaliano} is not type-3. Type-3 would be {natmrxitaliano}.
There is no reasonable explanation for why there is an official
gismu {jerxo} but no {talno}. I use the unofficial {talno} for "Italian".

{tolci'o} and {mencre} don't seem to be particularly long.
{ricyratcu} does not strike me as too long for "squirrel" either,
and you could have used {tirxyxi'a} for "zebra".

We have {xatsi} because it corresponds to an SI prefix, I don't see
a problem with that. We have {gutci} because the language designers
were from the US. There does not seem to be any other sensible
explanation for having non-SI units among the gismu.

{samcu} is probably part of some gismu group or other that wouldn't
be complete without it, but I don't know much about that.

{zajba} is something of a mystery. 1987 was not an Olympic Games
year, I wonder if {zajba} wasn't perhaps added in 1988... Then again,
I notice that the Pan American games were held in Indianapolis in 1987
(this year they were in Rio de Janeiro), which could perhaps help
explain it.

mu'o mi'e xorxes