aphorisms & cultural gismu

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!shoulson>]

And writes about aphorisms and cultural gismu.  I'm not going to touch that
aphorism, leastways not for now.

As for cultural gismu, there was a long discussion about those a while
back.  I'm still not 100% satisfied with the choices made, but have come to
accept them.

One major point that needs to be made, though:  And asks why "Canadian" is
"kadno" and not "kando".  As you pointed out, there is "kandi"=="dim".
Note that no two gismu may differ only in their final vowel, as that would
give them identical 4-letter rafsi (kand-).  Moreoever, it is against the
driving principle of lojban to say "nobody would ever think 'you're looking
pale today' meant 'you're looking Canadian today'".  We're trying to cook
up an *unambiguous* language, rememner?  That means that there's no way to
confuse one statement for another (except in well-defined ways, e.g. the
ambiguity of tanru, ellipsis, etc).  If we allow that sort of confusion,
we'd be no better off than English ("what color is that thing?" "pale" "I
*know* it's a pail.  What color is it?"--granted, bad grammar and dumb
conversation).  I'm sure somebody else will pick up on this and say it
better than I can.

~mark