Subject: [lojban] du, speed, units

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:24:54 -0400

On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 06:30:03PM +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> {junta} itself is one of those inexplicable gismu.
> Why is there a gismu for weight, but none for height,
> length, size, age, speed, beauty, and so many other
> names of properties.
> 
> >Sigh. Of course, I'm probably missing something.
> >
> >(I'll admit to not having any idea what good du would do as seltau,
> >however.)
> 
> How about {du karda} for "i.d. card"?

These seemingly unrelated comments gave me an idea. One of the "holes" in
Lojban's vocabulary thus far seems to be words for mixed units - we can
describe something's length in meters or its duration in seconds, but we can't
describe speed in meters per second.

When we say "meters per second", we mean that for the speed in question a
certain number of meters corresponds to a certain number of seconds. So how
about "meters per second" -> {mitre du snidu} -> {tredubysnidu}? (Or
{tredunsnidu} - is there a difference?)

And then there's the question of multiplying units... I don't think simply
running the rafsi for units together would work very well - perhaps they could
be linked with {jol}. (Or {pi'i}, though that seems ugly to me.) And would
{reltre} be a square meter?
-- 
Rob Speer