Re: lojban newbie: an outsider looking in

["Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>]

coi maikl ualys

>   My understanding is that while there are many root words (gismu) in 
>lojban, they don't account for every noun/verb/
>whatever you could say in a natural language.

There are about 1500 gismu, they can't account for the
millions or more nouns and verbs of natural languages.

>So most things are described metaphorically
>(tanru) by combining gismu.

Usually things are not described metaphorically in the
poetic sense, but yes as compound words.

>If the tanru catches on, it gets cooked
>down into a compound word (lujvo).

Often, maybe most times, lujvo are used without
a tanru having been used first.

>There is some kind of magical trick
>to this process that ensures that no two lojban words are ever the same.

Not magical, but admittedly a little more complicated
than it need have been.

>   I'm considering creating a 'bot to get the entire archive from
>egroups, saving it to my site, setting up my own little search engine,
>and putting it all on my website...

Yes, please do! For example, someone just asked for the
meaning of {ta'u}. I would love to be able to do a search
to find out how many times {ta'u} has been used (if ever)
and with which of the two alternative meanings. We have
a pretty large corpus of Lojban text by now, but, as you say,
very difficult to use.

>The
>lines and circles look kind of weak. Sickly, even. I haven't seen
>anyone actually using it, so I kind of wonder if it ought to be
>replaced.

We're probably stuck with it as the official logo, but nothing
stops you or anyone else from creating and using a better
one, and if it catches on, it will become the unofficial logo...

co'o mi'e xorxes