I also agree that it makes more sense to ditch cultural gismu, since:
1) You'll never be able to have a 'complete set;' there will always be unequal representation
2) You'll never be able to find�objective definitions for these cultures/languages/nations/whatever
...it just seems more sensible to me to make them fi'uvla or even just standardized cmene,
otherwise you're�diluting gismu space with unclear and unmaintainable elements.
�
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 05:19, Christopher Doty
<suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 14:08, Minimiscience
<minimiscience@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that only those cultures that are directly relevant to Lojban should
have {gismu}, i.e., Lojban itself ({lojbo}) and the six source languages
({glico}, {jungo}, {rusko}, {spano}, {xindo}, & {xrabo}). �The {gismu} for the
continents can also stay, but I don't think they really count as cultural
{gismu} in the first place. �The remaining cultural {gismu} should be
deprecated and/or removed and their {rafsi} freed up.
If this were done (which I actually think is not a bad idea), though, one would need to change the definition of these terms, as they're being included based on language, not culture--the gismu ought to be something like "reflects the English language" and not "culture," or else you've lost any sense of cultural neutrality.
Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how useful a term like "xindo" is if we're being neutral--what's Chinese? �Is Tibet? �Or people who speak a non-Tibeto-Burman language and live way in the western part of China and don't speak Mandarin?