Subject: RECORD: fu'ivla

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 04:57:39 EDT

fu'ivla
While it hardly seems that we are at a point where stage 3 or 4
fu'ivla are needed in the language generally, people do find the need
arising out of the peculiarities of their lives -- especially for
national/cultural words. 
The first question that arises in these cases is, why not a gismu, like
the odd assortment we already have? The odd assortment arises
from the major (in size or population or prestige) countries where
the languages on which lojban is based are spoken, though some of
the inclusions and omisssions are rather arbitrary. The rest of the
world is meant to be covered (and some places recovered) by 
regional terms, but the coverage leaves both cultural and linguistic
features unexpressed (or incorrectly covered). Hence there is a
need, if you deal with an area a lot, for the fu'ivla but little
justification for gismu (unless you make a case for a country that
speaks a base language has been wrongfully omitted).

Then how to build the right form? For either level 3 or 4 you need
a word that meets a set of tests and, in addition, is
acceptable/recognizable by/ based upon the native usage. There is
also some nod in the direction of international recognition as well
(something related to Korea {kori,e} rather than Chosen {djocen},
although the latter is the native preference, for example). In some
cases, this leaves only small problems: Turkey is t*rki,@ and the
only problems are whether * is u - as it is generally written in roman
letters - or i - the nearest thing in Lojban to its pronounced for, IPA
/y/ - and whether @ is a or e, following different senses of
pronunciation, etymology, and the like. (For the country name
there is the further question of the final consonant, the "regular
(habitual)" s, an etymological t or x, or an arbitrary one to break the
habit.
With a notion like Caribean, where the limits of the cultural area are
unclear even and surely embrace several langauges and several
scoops of countries, the problems multiply. Carib (and why not the
Arawak, anyway?) does not offer an obvious form: karib => krib,
kraib, karb, kairb. And whose preference do we follow? The
suggestion that perhaps a lujvo is more approriate here runs into the
problem that the area is conceptualized in so many ways that each
suggestion is culturally (and politically) suspect -- and generally
geologically flawed as well. 
The person who wants a word of this sort is, thus, left to his own devices -- 
make one up that obeys the rules and then defend it when attacked (or modify 
it) . It is not going to be "official" in any case for a while, since no one 
"official" is keeping records of what fu'ivla are being used.