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Re: [lojban] Why is there no noodle gismu?



la gleki wrote:
    And for those who bother to look up the word "pasta", you will find
    that
    it means precisely "pesxu", though "djapesxu" would more probably
    reflect its normal usage, as described in the encyclopediac definition.

    (I'll note in passing that we actually did consider the question of
    "pasta" when creating the gismu list, with pesxu being determined as
    the
    solution.  Indeed, pasta should probably have been added to the set of
    synonyms in the definition.)


ra'u mi kanpe lo nu lo pesxu ka'e cidja po'onai vau je'u peiru'e

kanpe ki'a

well, i guess pesxu can be not only a food?

Depends on what you put in x2.  Certainly x2 need not be edible.

And there are food things that meet the definition of pesxu that we don't consider pasta in English: tofu and jello being two that come to mind (though they perhaps better fit with jduli; we had some kind of noodle made of tofu as an appetizer at a Chinese restaurant when we gave the Lojban talk in Williamsburg on the 19th - it was better described a so'erpexsri than so'ejdu, and it looked like pasta to me). Lojban classifications need not be exactly those of English or other languages. pexsri would likely have a composition place, and in the case of caulking (a non-edible paste-ribbon Nora just mentioned), you would probably want a modifier or an explicit place that makes it clear it isn't edible. Robin doesn't want his infants eating caulking. But then you also don't want kids to eat those decorations made by young kids using uncooked pasta and glue, either.

But if edibility is important to your concept of pasta, you would probably want djapesxu (and djapexsri for a pasta noodle).

BTW, another borderline case I should have mentioned. It was asserted by someone that "buckwheat" (xruba) is not a grain, and thus would not normally be in this category. Americans would probably think of rhubarb as a fruit, since we only know of it in pies. But in fact mw.com does say that the seed of the buckwheat plant is used as a cereal grain (presumably buckwheat pancakes are made of xruba pesxu). That buckwheat is a staple grain in Russia and other parts of Eurasia is why we added a gismu for the rhubarb/buckwheat plant.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buckwheat?show=0&t=1367532771

lojbab

--
Bob LeChevalier    lojbab@lojban.org    www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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