From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Mon Oct 30 23:41:08 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_2_1); 31 Oct 2000 07:41:08 -0000 Received: (qmail 29735 invoked from network); 31 Oct 2000 07:41:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 31 Oct 2000 07:41:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO banmatpc.math.bas.bg) (195.96.243.2) by mta2 with SMTP; 31 Oct 2000 07:41:03 -0000 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id JAA18975 for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:40:54 +0200 Message-ID: <39FE85ED.1084@math.bas.bg> Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 10:42:21 +0200 Reply-To: iad@math.bas.bg Organization: Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: month names References: <8tkpnb+flt@eGroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski I think that the fact that most of the world's languages have the same names for the months of the Western calendar (modulo phonetic differences) is a Very Good Thing. I also think that the fact that some of the languages that do not use the Latin names of the months use numbers for them is an Even Better Thing. Why throw out a chance to make learning/speaking/understanding Lojban easier for the few who want to? A novel set of month names, especially one not based on a culturally fixed calendric twelvesome, strikes me as an unjustified mental burden. michael helsem wrote: > --- In lojban@egroups.com, pycyn@a... wrote: > > Why not take the (ok, abstractly arbitrary, but > > culturally fixed) zodiacal animals from China. > > rat RATCU horse XIRMA > ox (bovine BAKNI) goat KANBA > tiger TIRXU monkey SMANI > rabbit RACTU rooster (chicken JIPCI) > dragon RAMRESPA dog GERKU > snake SINCE bear CRIBE Typo or misreading? It's not `bear' but `boar', ie `pig'. > this is usable but (1) requires one lujvo; Make it just {respa} then. > (2) RATCU & RACTU are too similar; The rabbit is replaced by a cat in some versions of the zodiac. Also the goat could just as well be a sheep. --Ivan