Re: TECH.QUERY *mexco

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

.uu na go'i (to lenu  selsku gi'e claxu le ma'oste )

I didn't produce that text without looking in the cmavo list.  I never
produce any non-trivial Lojban text that I expect people to actually
understand, wiuuthout checking the words in the lists.  Several reasons:
I've learned several iterations of word lists, and often come up with a
word that has been changed (Nora, even more than me is still prone to
coming up with the old Loglan word, even after 6 years of Lojban - I tend
to forever be one iteration behind the current changes)  Second reason is
that people expect me to be more exemplary in my use of the language than
most.

On the other hand, my reaction to the report of the error was indeed a
string of strong emotions, and I decided at that time that I was
going to launch an attitudinal stream of the sort I did (even though I
had not read Veijo's message), and I mostly used attitudinals that I knew.
It happens that I had a system crash while typing in that message, and
therefore went back over what I had done off-line before re-logging in,
and added in a couple of new ones, and moved a couple to make them clearer.
The basic text composition, though was done on the fly, as was 80% of the
attitudinals.  (My weakness is in the CVVs of UI, and you may have noticed
that I didn't use many of them.  I know most of the VVs fairly well, and
especially the ones that I used, can issue them relatively spontaneously,
along with the 6 attitudinal classifiers.

As for the gismu change, I see Veijo's argument as sound, but beyond
what we can do in the language; r and l are amonmg the most frequent consoannts
in the language, and are so prevalent that people who have problems with
them will have some difficulty.  In addition, one of the constraints on the
gismu list is that we forbid two gismu to only differ due to an r/l (or
a p/b, for that matter) distinction.  Still, if there is argument for another
choice, as Colin has made, we might as well do something else.

I can live with mexno as well, and the clue Colin suggested (Mexicano) is worth
something.  I can suggest two other several possibilities, one of which
support Veijo's suggestion:

mexto or mexlo, based on Mixtec, one of the largest Nahuatl dialects,
and Mixitli (sp?) which is the Nahuatl word from which Mexico was derived.
Probably all of these words are related.  The 't' also suggested to me
'Aztec', which of course in turn sugggested the Mixtec.  Note that the 'tl'
really is not a 't' sound at all, though it ends up being written with a 't' in
all the Mexican native dialects - it is really closer to the 'll' sound of
Welsh, as I understand it, hence the choice of either 't' or 'l' as the
new letter.

lojbab