[lojban] Re: Projects

[Philip Newton <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:27:16 -0000, reverendzow <reverendzow@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Lastly, a set of ideograms for gismu.

There've been a couple of attempts at this before; one of mine (based
on Japanese) is at http://shavian.org/lojban/gismu-jap.html , for
example. (At least one other is based on Chinese, IIRC). Not as
official projects, though; more as fun, as I understand it.

> This requires the potential to
> make a simple visual system for making lujvo, else the phonetic
> alphabet could be used for gismu and lujvo as well.

It would certainly need to allow people to differentiate between lujvo
and tanru; "glibau" is not the same as "glico bangu". (It *is* the
same as "gicybau" or "glicybangu", though, by definition, so one
notation could conceivably represent either.)

> For instance, what shall we call words that possess brivla?

What do you mean with that? How can a word possess a brivla? There are
words, some of which are Lojban words, some of which are brivla.

> I have come up with ka'eserafsi, although my construction may
> be flawed,

That falls apart into the three words "ka'e se rafsi". "da ka'e se
rafsi" seems to me to mean something like "X can be a word which has
rafsi". But only gismu and some cmavo have rafsi; brivla in general do
not. (The lujvo composed of "ka'e se rafsi" would be "ka'erselrafsi",
FWIW.)

> Similarly, it seems the selma'o are named
> after the most commonly used elemental cmavo, rather than a Lojban
> meaning of their function.

*nods* Those are conventional English names, though.

I do not believe there are any official Lojban names for cmavo;
indeed, I seem to recall some saying that they hope that the Lojban
name for e.g. selma'o GOhA does not contain the word "go'a".

> The point is:  it is quite likely that the vocabulary needs
> serious optimization/reform if widespread adoption of
> Lojban is to occur.

The point is: many people have put a lot of effort into learning
Lojban in its current form. Reforming or optimising would render that
effort largely useless.

Aka: it's not gonna happen. If you want to create son-of-Lojban, by
all means feel free, but don't tinker with Lojban itself (unless you'd
like to join the BPFK and attempt to formalise what exactly certain
constructs mean).

Good luck.

mu'o mi'e .filip.
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>