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[lojban] Re: No gismu for Difference



On Sunday, March 24, 2013 6:15:11 PM UTC+4, tsani wrote:
I'm nearly certain this has been remarked on in the past, but there appears to be no gismu for "difference" in the mathematical sense. This is pretty inconsistent, as there're gismu for the other three basic mathematical operators, namely {sumji}, {pilji}, and {dilcu}, for sum, product, and quotient, respectively.

As it stands, there're a few non-gismu solutions, such as {selsumji}. Indeed, cleverly rearranging the places of a sum produces a difference in much the same way as doing so to the places for a product produces a quotient. Why, then, should {dilcu} and not <difference> exist?

If we consider that {vu'u}, the mekso subtraction operator, is based on {vimcu}, we can try to make a subtraction selbri from it. First, we need to remove the agent with zil-, then we need to convert the (thus) x3 with ter-: {terzilvi'u}.

{terzilvi'u} has one obvious problem though: semantically, it isn't purely mathematical. The other three are clearly definitely mathematical, whereas {vimcu} is used for any partial removal of something. "Getting a haircut" is phrased in terms of {vimcu}.

It seems like it'd add consistency if a gismu were simply made up for this rather than try to find other solutions. I (naïvely) suggest {subja}, with -sub- from English & romlang "subtract" and -ja- from Mandarin "jiǎn".

.ienai when jian3 was chosen for {jdika} it was nearly okay. but "jian3" for sure should be converted to lojban as "dzian" or "dian". however, you chose {ja} which in Mandarin will be "ra". So whats the advantage of importing mnemonics that wont work at all?

Next, why you choose the gloss "to subtract". Whats the proposed definition?
x1 is a difference/result of subtraction of x3 from x2 ?

Then the glossword should be "difference"

Bulgarian: разлика (bg) f
Czech: rozdíl (cs) m
Danish: differens (da) c
Dutch: verschil (nl) n
Esperanto: diferenco
Finnish: erotus (fi)
French: différence (fr) f
German: Differenz (de) f
Hebrew: הפרש (hefresh) m
Indonesian: selisih
Italian: differenza (it) f
Japanese: 差 (さ, sa)
Persian: اختلاف (fa) (extelâf), تفاضل (fa) (tafâzol)
Polish: różnica (pl) f
Romanian: diferență (ro) f
Russian: разность (ru) (ráznost’) f, разница (ru) (ráznitsa) f
Slovene: razlika (sl) f
Spanish: diferencia (es) f
Swedish: differens (sv) c, skillnad (sv) c
Telugu: భేదము (bhaedamu)

As for Mandarin it is cha1shu4

Of course we can play with  the sounds a bit but in order to get a better mnemonic we have to choose either chinese or romance etymology.
So I suggest either {tcacu}/{tcaco} (.uinaisai it clashes with {tcaci}) or {difro} (final -o is normal for mekso gismu).

However, selsumji seems fine to me. But if you do really want to add it to jvs please consider that jian3 is not suitable.


subja = x1 is the difference, x2 minus x3

If there were other suggestions for a potential gismu for this in the past, I'd like to know them. If there were none, I'll probably add this to jbovlaste within a few days.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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