Re: [lojban] Lojban wall of complexity (beginner thoughts)

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday 26 July 2012 16:33:49 Bruno Durin wrote:
> looking at it than the English one (so less potential answers to my
> questions, either by asking directly or by googling archives). By the way,
> I've only managed to get the archive
> (http://mail.lojban.org/lists/lojban-fr/) that stops in late 2011 with some
> messages talking about resurrecting the list. So what is its status? Is is
> still active?

It's still there, for any francophone lojbanist to send messages to other 
francophone lojbanists. The last message (ignoring the monthly reminders, 
which on my computer get filtered somewhere else) was sent by Robin in 
English to the announce list, which forwards to several other lists.

> give. In a non artificial language I would have looked in a dictionary and
> even with a low level in the language I could have build a clumsy but
> hopefully understandable sentence. Here you made the word for me. To your
> mind, is a very good knowledge of the grammar and basis words (gismo and
> cmavo) enough to be able to build new words as you did or are only
> linguists have the experience and intuition to do this? I don't know
> whether you are a linguist, I just assume you are, as founders of lojban.
> Why klesi could not be used, maybe mixed with skami in an other tanru, or
> simply with x2 always dropped and x3 giving directly the definition as in
> "Point is a class with 2 numbers, coordinate x and coordinate y"? Point
> would klesi1, 2 numbers, coordinate x and coordinate y, klesi3. I am not
> trying to convince you klesi is the right word, I'd like to understand why
> you dismissed it. Another idea would be the lojban meaning "a form of
> instances containing things", highlighting the members instead of the
> methods as your definition does.
> If we imagine that a world for "class" is eventually in the "official
> dictionary" of lojban in 2050, when lojban is spoken by millions of people
> (let's dream a bit...), would it be the result of specialist discussions
> during several years? or the people writing the most on the subject kind-of
> imposing their choice?

You could look up the word in an English dictionary, or a Hungarian 
dictionary, or a Russian dictionary and find what you want. If you looked it 
up in a Tzutujil or Seri or Navajo dictionary, you would probably come up 
empty.

The definition of "klesi" (x1 is a class[...] within x2 with defining property 
x3) doesn't fit the computer definition of "class" at all. A CS class is a 
type (variables of the type can be created) with some associated methods 
(functions) and members (like a structure, not a set). The reason I 
highlighted the methods is that without them, a class is just a struct 
(although in C++, a struct is just a class with the default being public). An 
example of a klesi is the set of languages in which the subject usually 
precedes the verb.

Several languages, such as Hungarian and Hebrew and English, went through a 
phase in which lots of new words were coined, thus making it possible to talk 
in those languages about lots of kinds of things that couldn't be discussed 
before. Many of those words (such as "catillate") are now forgotten, but many 
remain. Lojban could be at the beginning of such a period.

Pierre
-- 
The Black Garden on the Mountain is not on the Black Mountain.

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