Subject: Re: [lojban] centripetal / big endian pattern

From: PILCH Hartmut <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 May 2000 13:52:48 +0000 (/etc/localtime)

> It is not very clear to me what status the recommendation
> to use DD;MM;YYYY has in Lojban. The reverse order is equally
> grammatical and just as easy to understand. It is also
> unambiguous, because the 4 digits of the year make it clear
> which part is the year. So:
> 
> {li 2000;05;07} can be nothing but May 7th of this year,
> same as {li ;05;07} and {li ;;07}. (I would assume that
> elisions default to current.)
> 
> Similarly {li 07;05;2000}, {li 07;05;} and {li 07;;}.
> 
> Since there is no possible confusion, there doesn't seem
> to be any need to exclude either one as a possibility.

There is a reason to opt for the big endian (2000-07-05) approach:
Lojban has, like Chinese, a loose tanru structure where the determining
part comes before the determined part, as in 

The 2000th year's 7th month's 5th day

Chinese (and Lojban) don't need a genitive (apostrophe s) particle, which
is why Chinese has the structure 2000-07-05 and so should Lojban.

The elision argument has no weight, because one can elide both at the end
and at the beginning. If it had weight, why does no advocate of the
little endian sequence apply it to the time, e.g. saying "it is 45:09" ?
Or to numbers, saying, eightteen, nineteen, twenty, one-twenty,
two-twenty, .. ?

Evidently little endian / centrifugal expressions don't stand up to any
strong testing. They are based on a habit that works only for simple
tasks.

www.lojban.org

still seems ok, but nobody would apply little endian to the directory
structure:

http://paragraph3/section3/chapter2/part4/www.lojban.org

which would be the only logical consequence of using little endian in
internet URLs.

Not only should dates be centripetally (big endian) structured, but so
should personal names and addresses of all types. The little endian is an
illogical mess, not only in Lojban but also in English, whose messy
conventions have unfortunately achieved world-wide dominance and has even
entered the realm of URLs and email addresses.

Actually the little endian structure comes from French and, before that,
from Latin. It is the Chinese language with its Lojban-like isomorphisms
which has in many ways more logical structures.

-phm