Re: And the Eskimos have 100 words for 'Snow Cone'

[Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@math.bas.bg>]

sklyanin@pdmi.ras.ru wrote:
> Ivan Derzhanski wrote:
> >Never mind `fun'; why is there no word for `meal' in Russian
> >(or Bulgarian, or many other languages for that matter)?
> 
> Yes, I had a tough time trying to translate the gismu "sanmi" for my
> Lojban-Russian dictionary (my current project, far from completion).
> After all, I came up with "trapeza", a word rarely used in modern
> language but the nearest thing to "meal" I could think of.

Yet not nearly near enough. Some examples in the Codex talk about
{citka le sanmi}; a _trapeza_ is something you can organise, share
with someone, but you can't eat it. (Maybe etymology has something
to do with it: before the two words could refer to an eating event,
_meal_ was `food' and _trapeza_ was `table'.)

How about glossing {sanmi} as `breakfast, lunch or dinner'?
Is `arm or hand' not more palatable than `human upper limb'
as a gloss for _ruka_?

-- 
<'al-_haylu wa-al-laylu wa-al-baydA'u ta`rifunI
wa-as-sayfu wa-ar-rum.hu wa-al-qir.tAsu wa-al-qalamu>
(Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi)
Ivan A Derzhanski <http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria <iad@math.bas.bg>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences