[lojban] Re: Projects

[Maggie Turner <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

Philip Newton wrote:

> 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.
> 

It is also hard to see what reforms would be useful.
It is true that 
there were glitches in the original gismu generation,
largely because 
the lack of a native Chinese speaker lojbanist at the
time meant that 
some of the Chinese vocabulary was incorrectly
lojbanised, but this is a 
minor issue; the gismu "hooks" are meant to be aids to
memorisation, not 
recognition. To give an example of where the process
worked well, I can 
remember "cukta" easily because of Chinese "shu",
English "book" and 
Arabic "kitap", but none of these would be any help if
I hadn't seen the 
word before. There might also have been a case for
giving English a 
higher weighting, given that the number of
second-language English 
speakers is rising, and seems set to do so for the
conceivable future, 
but as Philip points out, it's too late to start
mucking around with the 
language for what would probably be very minor gains
in learnability.

The only reforms that would significantly increase
ease of vocabulary 
learning would also, I think, break the morphology. If
you want a 
language with easily recognisable vocabulary, you
can't have such strict 
morphology, and if you want to go down that route, you
may as well 
choose Esperanto, Interlingua or (God help us)
Occidental.

robin.tr



	
	
		
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