cultural gismu

[Cyril Slobin <slobin@ice.ru>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e:

> I was happy to find that there was a word for Argentinian, but even so
> it seemed to me very arbitrary.

I was really excited to find word "softo" in lojban. The fine point here
is that there are no such word in Russian! Reading newspapers and books
about history, sociology and politic, I observe often how author needs
for such word, searches for such word... and fails. "Sovetskiy" (Soviet)
implies "communist" and therefore is not applicable for pre-1917 and/or
post-1991 Russia (if someone is unaware - foundation and destruction of
Soviet State in Russia). "Russkiy" (Russian) is lojban "rusko" and
exludes eg. Ukraine. "Rossiyskiy" (also Russian, but rather "gugde
rusko" or "jecta rusko") also excludes Ukraine etc. "CIS" seems to be an
artificial creature and anyway does not apply to USSR and/or old Russian
Empire. There is no way to join Empire/USSR/CIS in one word in current
Russian language, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it in lojban.

co'o mi'e kir.

-- 
Cyril Slobin <slobin@ice.ru>