Subject: Re: [lojban] spatnrosace

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 21:17:10 -0400

At 04:56 PM 10/5/01 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > You seem to be trying to add type IV fu'ivla with the idea that everyday
> > people will learn these as often and as easily as they learn gismu. If
> > they don't, you gain nothing by making them type IV over type I-III.
>
>I find gismu hard to learn and spend much of the time looking them up when I
>write Lojban. They don't look like other words I know for what they mean.
>{gerku}, for example, is a mixture of Chinese and Hindi, neither of which I
>know. {simba}, the Loglan word, makes a lot more sense than {cinfo} - it's
>the same as Swahili, and one letter different from Sanskrit. {ractu} and
>{ratcu} are too close.
>
>Fu'ivla based on Linnean names, which about 32 of the 39 are, are easier to
>remember. They come from one language (or often two, Latin and Greek), and
>the Linnean names are used by biologists and others worldwide. I see nothing
>wrong with using Linnean fu'ivla as common names; this is common in French
>and Spanish (where many of them, e.g. "orge" and "trigo", are not fu'ivla),
>and happens ofter enough in English (e.g. spirea).

You are basically repeating the argument for "Anglan" which is English 
words with Lojban syntax so people don't have to learn difficult 
vocabulary. But yours is harder to justify because in fact almost no one 
who is NOT a biologist knows more than a couple of the Linnean names, so 
that, barring the Romance language speakers that as you say use the Linnean 
names commonly, you end up losing both the pure Lojbanists, and the lazy 
English/Anglan speakers %^)

But I suspect that neither of us will convince the other. We'll just have 
to agree to disagree.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org