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Re: [lojban] Currency units
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 11:43 PM, komfo,amonan <komfoamonan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I find myself vehemently opposed to these proposals. Some of the reasons
> I've stated earlier in this or another related thread, but to summarize.
I will make a comment for each of the reasons, but only one of them
(number 2) seems like an actual reason to oppose the proposal. All the
others seem at most like reasons to remain indifferent.
> 1) There is cultural bias all over the language. Whatever bias is perceived
> as a result of autonymous vocabulary creation isn't IMHO much of a big deal
> in comparison.
Personally, I would agree with that. I wouldn't put cultural
neutrality as the main advantage of making use of the ISO codes to
create fu'ivla, even though this was what started the idea.. Just
forget about cultural neutrality for a minute, is the use of ISO codes
to make fu'ivla still a bad idea?
> 2) The ISO approach yields hundreds of words which are to me frustratingly
> similar.
This is the only one that sounds like an actual reason to me.
But I'm not sure how valid it is. Of course, if you see an
alphabetical list of all of them together they will look very similar,
but in practice you would be unlikely to be using more than a few at a
time.
Consider for example:
gugde'i'e: x1 is the country with ISO code 'IE' (Ireland)
gugde'isu: x1 is the country with ISO code 'IS' (Iceland)
gugdesuzu: x1 is the country with ISO code 'SZ' (Swaziland)
Both the suffix -land in English and the prefix gugde- in the fu'ivla
give you a hint that it's the name of a country.
The difference in the fu'ivla is actually greater than the difference
between "Ireland" and "Iceland" in English.
Of course, not that many country names in English use the suffix
-land, but I think in Chinese most country names do use the same
sufffix. (And lujvo ending in "-gu'e" are also quite frequent).
> 3) The ISO approach can't help you with defunct countries, so the Inca
> Empire will presumably remain {la tauantinsuius}.
So what? Nobody is saying that every single fu'ivla ever will have to
be based on an ISO code. All the proposal does is assign a fu'ivla to
each ISO code.
> 4) The ISO approach can't help you with ethnicities, so a Buryat will
> presumably be {*prenrburiada} or {*se natmrburiada} or {*burdiada}, while
> the Buryat language will carry an ISO code.
Again, so what?
banbu'u'a: x1 is the language with ISO code 'bua' (Buryat (generic))
banbuxu'u: x1 is the language with ISO code 'bxu' (China Buriat)
banbuxumu: x1 is the language with ISO code 'bxm' (Mongolia Buriat)
banbuxuru: x1 is the language with ISO code 'bxr' (Russia Buriat)
If you wanted to, you could use the language code 'bua' to form
nairbu'u'a for the Buryat ethnic group, but that's outside the scope
of the proposal. The approach is not meant to provide a method for
creating every single fu'ivla ever, it is just a method for creating
fu'ivla out of ISO codes, nothing more than that.
And if you do happen to like something like 'bangrburiada', there is
nothing to stop the two forms from coexisting:
banbu'u'a: x1 is the language with ISO code 'bua' (Buryat (genetric)).
bangrburiada: x1 is the Buryat language.
This proposal does not use type-3 forms at all, so there won't be any
conflicts there.
> 5) The ISO presumably had different goals in developing the codes than
> Lojbanistan does in developing vocabulary.
Again, so what? Why does it matter what the goals of ISO are. There is
a list of ISO codes. We might wish to have a convenient way of using
them as fu'ivla. That's all.
> I laud all the work y'all have put into generating this vocabulary. Leo just
> asked for opinions, so I gave one.
>
> I don't have enough time to devote to Lojban these days to generate 250
> autonymous words for languages & put them into jbovlaste, or even to decide
> why they should be brivla rather than cmevla. Shrug. But it's a fascinating
> discussion.
It's actually 7704 language codes, not just 250. It's unlikely that
anyone would have the time or the desire to handcraft them one by one.
The ISO codes exist. It seems useful to make predicates out of them.
This proposal just gives a method that churns out reasonably looking
fu'ivla out of two letter or three letter codes. I don't really see
anything problematic with that.
A different question is whether you would actually use these words,
and in what contexts, but why oppose the concept? It's not as if the
method blocks a terribly big chunk of fu'ivla space. How many fu'ivla
are likely to be otherwise created with forms gugdeXXXX or banXXXXXX?
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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