Subject: Re: [lojban] dictionary - which words?

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 21:56:48 +0000

>From: Jay F Kominek <[email-masked]>
> > Of course "sadness" should appear in the English-Lojban part,
> > but surely noone is planning to include "ka badri" as a separate
> > entry in the Lojban-English part, I hope. Similarly, "se mau"
> > should not be a separate entry.
>
>I was thinking ".uinai" myself. Sure, you can look up ".ui" and negate
>it. But maybe the person wants to look up ".uinai". Is there something
>inherently wrong with their wanting to do that?

The meaning of "uinai" should be found in the entry for "ui".
Many attitudinals are incomprehensible unless the full scale
is given in the definition. (And the cmavo list already does
that anyway.) Why should the compound "ui nai" have an entry
but the compound "ka badri" not have an entry?

>Why would it be a bad thing to explain combinations of words, when they're
>clearly marked as being multiple words?

I would say it would be messy rather than bad. It is disorganized,
how would you know which combinations are listed separately and
which are not?

>Just because you shouldn't need
>to look them up once you know all the cmavo doesn't quite seem like
>sufficient justification for removing entries. People may, after all,
>want to use a dictionary before they've mastered Lojban.

I'm not suggesting removing any information from the dictionary.
I'm discussing where is the information to be found.

>Thinking "semau" is a single word is wrong, not knowing the meaning of
>"se mau" isn't wrong. Merely simple ignorance, easily corrected by a
>dictionary entry. Even if it is one that points the reader to "mau" or
>"zmadu".

Why would the reader go looking for a two-word entry in the first
place? They should find all the information they need under "mau".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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