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Re: [lojban] Origins of the prim/gismu list


On Dec 1, 2003, at 12:06 PM, John Cowan wrote:

What is known about the origins of the Loglan prim list?  Did JCB just
cook up the English words out of his own head, or did he use some other
resources to do so?

(As I am not a Yahoo group member, I cannot direct CC to the yahoo. group)
My recollection is that he used a list of most frequently used concepts in
four European languages by a Ms. Eaton. It was probably somewhat out of
date, as there were some high frequency items like 'gold standard' that are
not currently in vogue, but for regularly used words is probably reasonably
accurate. The rest of the dictionary was made up to include all words up to
a certain frequency level, with other words added as needed (such as computer
terms and other concepts not current in the 1930s. There were probably other
considerations such as the suitability for complex (lujvo) making

Bob McIvor



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