Re: buckwheat

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 08:49 AM 8/29/99 -0400, Diane Burgess wrote:
>From: "Diane Burgess" <yfnb@home.com>
>
>The effort to translate the English definitions of Lojban words into Russian
>has begun by Mr. Evgeny Sklyanin, and one of the first questions that
>surfaced was the issue of buckwheat.  To wit:
>
> >I am puzzled with mentioning buckwheat (гÑ?еÑ?ка, гÑ?еÑ?иÑ?а) 
> together with
> >rhubarb (Ñ?евенÑ?) and sorrel (Ñ?авелÑ?). For me rhubarb and 
> sorrel are
> >vegetables (juicy stem/leaves) with strong sour taste. The buckwheat,
> >on the contrary, is a source of grain which, in Russia, we use to
> >make a sort of porridge (гÑ?еÑ?неваÑ? каÑ?а). Do you, in 
> America, eat
> >buckwheat as a salad?
>
>My answer to him sounds like a defense of a malglico-ism, but I don't have
>enough botanical expertise to know if it makes sense in this case to use the
>same word for family, genus, and species.
>
> >Buckwheat in English designates both genus >_Fagopyrum_ (the grain from
>which
> >your porridge is made), and family
> > _Polygonaceae_ (which includes rhubarb, dock, >and sorrel).
>
>Request some helpful explanations.
>
>garis

You guessed the intent exactly - to stretch the Lojban words for the 
staples  to cover the broadest possible useful meaning (in this case the 
family), allowing lujvo to narrow things to the genus/species when 
demanded.  Most of the time the gismu would work just fine for all of the 
above - you don't make rhubarb or sorrel porridge, so if the discussion 
mentions porridge, then you must be referring to the staple grain.

Presumably you could also make the lujvo for buckwheat-grain to 
specifically get the grain to the exclusion of the other possibilities.

Several of the other plant and animal gismu were written up hoping to give 
a broad meaning to be restricted when necessary using lujvo.  The word for 
hemp thus can be used for marijuana, and possibly for other hemp-like 
plants used in rope making.  The word for taro root I think had similar 
extensions in mind, but I can't remember what they were (tapioca, maybe?)

lojbab
----
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