There is no need to learn a zillion fu'ivla (type IV nonetheless and therefore meaningless to any other person who hasn't memorized the same list as you) to make the distinctions that people want to make in everyday speech. For the distinctions used in scientific discussions, the proper approach is the one that English scientists use along with most others in the world: type I fu'ivla "la'o spat. Spiraeoidae spat." la'o was put into the language specifically to avoid the need to solve the unsolvable Linnean binomial problem. (If some particular species are being used a lot in a paper or in a particular lab environment, the appropriate solution is to use names - type 2 fu'ivla or any of the anaphoric solutions. Type 3 fu'ivla are used when jargon is common enough to pass between fields and there is risk that two different jargon-using groups will fail to understand each other. Type 4 fu'ivla make sense only when a word is being used so often that it will be the sort of word that non-technical people would be expected to know and identify without context.
The following appeared in auxlang
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 11:48:17 +0300 From: Risto Kupsala <vojvod@SUNPOINT.NET> Subject: Universal scientific vocabulary > Samuel Rivier wrote: > do you have opinions on greek being a universal > vocabulary source? Does every language have the word > acrophobia as part of its vocabulary? Phobia is definitely widely recognized word. > There are certain terms used scientifically that I > feel should be borrowed into an IAL, such as canis for > dog (canis lupus), agora for public forum > (agoraphobia), and maybe tyrannus for emporer > (tyrannosaurus rex) Some biologists have the opinion that the common people should be educated to call animals with their two-word latin names. So, for example, instead of saying "dog", "hund", "cane", etc. everybody would say "canis lupus" in every country (and perhaps the accepted short form would be "canis"). This would work well in Europe because many languages are already affected by Latin to great extent. Here's an article supporting the idea: http://saltaquarium.about.com/library/weekly/aa100600.htm
The article is worth reading and argues my position far better than I have, and gives relevant examples of where one might want to use a common (i.e. lojbanized) name when one is not concerned about being exact as to the species.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org