[lojban] Re: Chinese, English and Spanish etymology of Lojban

[mublin <mublin@dealloc.org>]

Many thanks for the feedback and help with the Spanish source words!
Some comments follow below. The Spanish etymology [1] has been
updated.

[1] https://www.dealloc.org/~mublin 

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 02:37:14PM -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Several Spanish words are listed with unrelated meanings: "este"
> (east) and "este" (this) are different words, as are "sed" (thirst)
> and "sed" (be).  For {sumti}, "subject of a sentence" is more likely
> to be the relevant meaning than the verb form. "corto", at {tordu},
> does not have its homonym (form of "cortar").

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 06:42:40PM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> >explotar "to exploit"
>
> Although "to exploit" is one of its meanings, it does also mean "to
> explode".

Sorry about this. Many English translations are beside the point or
missing because (after the actual reconstruction was finished) they
were looked up on en.wiktionary.org by a script and added without any
editing. I do not know a good public domain dictionary, nor am I able
to write the 1300 odd translations myself.

For now, I have removed the many irrelevant inflected verb forms, for
example the translation of Spanish ``era'' (for English ``era'') as
``first-person singular imperfect indicative form of ser''.

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 06:42:40PM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> drudi roof [texod]
> tejado
> FIXIT correct transcription "tex"
> 
> Shouldn't that be "texad"?

Hm... yes.

I assumed ``tejado (roof)'' was a noun derived from the past
participle of ``tejar (to tile)''. Apparently it is in fact derived
from ``teja (tile)'' with derivational suffix ``-ado'' [1].

[1] http://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/tejado

In about half of the source words ending in ``-ado'', the ending was
removed before gismu generation, including mostly adjectives derived
from past participles, but also some nouns:

 jalge [result] resultado
 smuni [signifik] significado

In the other half, only the suffix ``-o'' was removed. Many of these
words are nouns and not derived from a Spanish past participle (though
often a Latin one), e.g.:

 sonci [soldad] soldado
 kurfa [kuadrad] cuadrado
 jecta [estad] estado

> ganti testicle [test]
> test-
> FIXIT dubious
> 
> "testa" is "head", but it doesn't make sense to have it as a option
> for "testículo".

Then I suppose [test] and [testikul] are just different Lojbanisations
of ``testículo'', and that removing the ending ``-ículo'' was
considered optional in the gismu generation process. Changed to:

 ganti [test] testículo
 ganti [testikul] testículo

> rijno silver [arxentos]
> argento "silver"
> FIXIT correct transcription "arxent"
> 
> I think some of the "Spanish" source words were actually Portuguese.
> Perhaps this is one of them, although that woldn't be the correct
> Portuguese prounciation of "argentoso". A Portuguese word with Spanish
> prounciation?

Hm... Could the adjective ``argentoso (silvery; containing silver)''
be an existent though hardly used word in both Portuguese and Spanish?
It is listed in Gran Enciclopedia Salvat [1] and on another site [2].

[1] http://www.ebrisa.com/portalc/articulo-S/417800
[2] http://www.laspalabras.net/suffixes/palabras_acabo_con_oso.php

> vlipa powerful [poder]
> poder "power, reign; authorization; to be able, can"
> FIXIT correct transcription "pod"
> 
> Probably "poderoso" (powerful).

I think ``poderoso'' would have been Lojbanised as ``poderos''. Almost
all source words ending in ``-oso'' were shortened to ``-os'', e.g.:

 glare [kaluros] caluroso
 kucli [kurios] curioso
 kukte [gustos] gustoso		

There are two (probably unintentional) exceptions to this:

 lazni [peres] perezoso		
 masno [despasi] despacioso		

Thanks again.

--
mu'o mi'e mublin.


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