From lojbab@lojban.org Wed Aug 15 23:06:52 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 16 Aug 2001 06:06:52 -0000 Received: (qmail 94803 invoked from network); 16 Aug 2001 06:06:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 16 Aug 2001 06:06:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailman1.cais.net) (205.252.14.61) by mta1 with SMTP; 16 Aug 2001 06:06:52 -0000 Received: from stmpy-1.cais.net (stmpy-1.cais.net [205.252.14.71]) by mailman1.cais.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id f7G5jGv77867 for ; Thu, 16 Aug 2001 01:45:16 -0400 (EDT) Received: from user.lojban.org (59.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.59]) by stmpy-1.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f7G5ZZ170964 for ; Thu, 16 Aug 2001 01:35:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010816011759.00d29870@pop.cais.com> X-Sender: vir1036@pop.cais.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 01:33:39 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: junta [was: Re: [lojban] selma'o considered harmful In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 09:44 PM 8/15/01 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote: >la maikl cusku di'e > > >maybe it's because we talk about weight as well as mass, the former being > >more important for everyday speech, but the latter being more > >fundamental. > >That would explain why there is a word for weight instead >of one for mass, but it doesn't explain why there is a >word for either one of them at all. Other properties like >size, length, etc. didn't get a special word. I believe it was indeed included because of the weight/mass distinction (with mass being ni marji, IIRC). Most of the other things that can be measured are not subject to this potential confusion, and were presumed to be expressible as ni abstractions, or klani/tergradu. I specifically aimed to cover all the major SI units with words for both the unit and the thing measured, but the latter method usually worked. junta could have been ni tilju, but I remembered how easily lay people confuse mass and weight and left junta in for Zipfean reasons. BTW, noting that Lojban defaults to using SI units in measurement, I intended that you can express such messes as g m/sec**2 (newton?) as lujvo based on such tanru as ni bapli [kei] gradu and acceleration as ni sutra cenba [kei] gradu. This seemed better than JCB's approach, which in 1986-7 included adding gismu for "volt" and other commonly used units, though those additions seem not to have made it into his revised Loglan 1 gismu list. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org