culture words, one more try

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

I made a statement about culture words and the nature of lojban gismu that 
people seem to have forgotten.  I'll summarize the key points:

1. Lojban gismu are in no way considered, or to be considered as 'primitives'
basic ideas, fundamental ideas, universal ideas, otr anything else more than
just words.  They are the shortest of the content words, and were chosen
based on two criteria: their frequency of usage in language in and of themselves
and their usefulness in making lujvo that have high frequency of usage.

It was to avoid all of the baggage of the English word 'primitive' that we started using the Lojban word, while JCB and the Institute still use the word
'primitive' and 'prim'.  (And it is reasonably certain that few will argue
that 'football' and 'billiards' are 'primitives' in any sense - we eliminated
both in making our gismu list.)

2. The culture words are among the most useful words around in making compounds 
for what people talk about.  Whatever eric chooses to believe is not relevant, 
nor who John Cowan worships.  Western civilization is heavily dominated by
the Judeo-Christian ethic, which in Lojban is "jegvo ke marde ciste" - but
since these are gismu, you could make this into a single-word lujvo.  "jegvo"
thus should not include all creator gods, except insofar as they lead to the
same cultural basis.  It was specifically included to support discussion
of Western culture, just as budjo and dadjo were added to support some of
the non-Westyern cultures.

3.  The selection of cultures, and rteligions associated with cultures was
made on purely numerical grounds.  The religions that can be talked about
using gismu all number over 250 million, and probably more than twice that.

Moreover, probably even more so in the Moslem cultures, it is probably 
impossible to carry on a conversation without some reference to cultural
'names', and in that particular example, to their religious concepts.
To give some examples - Mark Shoulson mentioned that he was Orthodox.
Translate that into Lojban without xebro, please.  Then try talking about
your practices and lifestyle without using innumerable words that in Lojban
should be lujvo including the rafsi for 'xebro'.

4. Less numerically adbvantaged cultures and religions are not totally deprived
- they can be compounded using le'avla borrowings, which use their full length
as a combining form.  But except for words of this sort that you use often,
you wouldn;t want to bother the words are just too long, and there are ways
to paraprhase with names, etc. that are shorter and clearer than tanru and
lujvo.  

We pay homage to one 'god' in the Lojban design, and that one is 'Zipf', whose
'law regarding the inverse relation between word length and frequency of use
has dominated many of JCB's decisions since he started the project. (Steve
Rice can perhaps comment on the current importance or lack of it in Institute
word-making decisions today.)

5. Most culture words, including jegvo, will not often be used by themseolves
- we can;t even clearly agree on their place structure when bare - the meaning
is too nebulous.  I would not use 'jegvo' as John Cowan did, to talk about who
 very often - to
label something as 'God', and his translation regarding Finagle and Murphy
using jegvo is only appropriate because the translation is a joke based on
a biblical reference.  (Oh bible is "jegvo cukta", of course)

They will, as Cowan noted, be oft used in lujvo.  Look on a page of the
newspaper any day, and count the number of cultural references.  You'd be 
amazed.  And most will not be names, but rather lujvo.  

If we didn;t allow fro such lujvo, the language in actual usage would end
up a big muddle of melai neimz. scattered hither and yon through our writings
and talkings.  And believe me - that usage can get awful clumsy after a
while when you require excess syntax too much.  Nor athinks my sentences
are too complicated as it is ...

lojbab