[lojban] Re: Question about apparent inconsistency with "nixli".

[Taspie <arcady.balandin@gmail.com>]

It would be impossible to create absolute symmetry in root words.
That's the way modern Esperanto tries to work (doktorino means female
doctor and doktoric^o means male doctor, but in numerous other cases
Esperanto is not logical at all).
But I think it's possible to eliminate nixli and nanla at all.
Aren't "fetyve'a" (fetsi zei verba) and "nakyve'a" (nakni zei verba)
synonyms of those words ?

Then there can be a simple table.

fetyve'a    = nixli       = girl
nakyve'a  = nakla     = boy
fetytunba = mensi    = sister
naktunba = bruna    = brother
fetre'a      = ninmu   = woman
nakre'a    = nanmu  = man

Quite easy to remember, isn't it ?

On Nov 30, 3:18 pm, Pan Mistwood <panmistw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Back when I first dove into learning Lojban, I noticed an apparent
> inconsistency with four gismu. And as far as I can tell, there's no
> reason for it, but I could be mistaken. So, after much
> procrastination, I'm asking about it here. (And as far as I could find
> with Google Web search and a search within this group, it hasn't been
> brought up before, which is rather surprising to me.)
>
> The gismu "nanmu" virtually means the English "man" or, more
> generally, "male humanoid". The gismu "ninmu" virtually means the
> English "woman" or "female humanoid". The gismu "nanla" virtually
> means the English "boy". Now, I understand that they are not preferred
> over the gismu "verba", "remna", and "prenu", but they do exist and
> are recognised as Lojbanic gismu.
>
> From those gismu, I can see a pattern. "nanmu" and "nanla" share "na-"
> while "nanla" and "nanmu" share "-mu". Following this pattern, the
> gismu virtually meaning the English "girl" would be "ninla"; "ni-" as
> in "ninmu" and "-la" as in "nanla". However, the gismu is actually
> "nixli". My question: as "ninla" is valid gismu syntax, is consistent
> with "nanmu", "nanla", and "ninmu", and is not already used to mean
> something else, why is "nixli" used instead?

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