On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 5:46 PM, RexScientiarum
<amt2839@gmail.com> wrote:
As for giving specific common names to animals I think that there probably is room for that sort of specificity in lojban. There SHOULD be, I think, otherwise I wouldn't see any point in learning it (learning a language with that sort of limitation). Exactly how it might be possible I am not certain of at this point in my lojban education but I have some ideas. I see that there is, in fact, a lujvo for the American Robin specifically in jbovlaste by gejyspa (who I am guessing might actually be a biologist judging by the definitions he has entered in jbovlaste).
Ahh, no. I am not. I'm a computer programmer. I'm familiar with taxa as much as the next guy. But because as my role in the language department of the cantr roleplaying game (
cantr.org) I had to translate many animal names, I had to create many of them myself (especially those that Pierre's wide net hadn't caught), especially those that had to be distinguished from other, similar ones in cantr. Depending on the case, I based my translations on either the Linnean name, used a tanru (which you won't see in jbovlaste), used fu'ivla from other languages (rarely a choice for me, unless the name seemed to be either pretty widespread or the animal was confined to a locally small area so the native name could be used (and the latter usual implies the former as well) (these would be what used to be called in Loglan I-prims and N-prims)), or a combination if a whole larger grouping (taxon, clade, or informal) was implied, and I needed specificity), or lujvo, in which I had to ask myself "is there a characteristic of this animal that is a hallmark/uniquish to this creature that would serve to identify it, as opposed to another, to someone who is familiar with the animal, without too much difficulty?" To answer this question, I read up on the animals, and also sometimes took inspiration from the meaning of their binomials.