Re: Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) introductory course

> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of R A Brown
> But picking the "best' word suggest that the best word was
> picked from
> one of those languages. That ain't so. It is true, the languages
were
> weighted, but the whole set of data, the words in the 6
> langs, and the
> weighting, were fed into an algorithm for the computer to churn out
> results that conformed to Lojban's phonological &
> orthographic criteria
> for 'gismu' and 'rafsi'. The result is considerable mangling of the
> input words. So IMO what Lojban does is not really comparable
> to the way
> in which Acadon,  Lingwa de Planeta and Sasxsek compile their
> vocabularies.
Yes, Lojban creates composite words by using an algorithm to sort of
melt the source words together, thus the mangling of words.

I can't speak for any of the others, but Sasxsek's words are
handpicked by looking over wordlists to find candidates.  There is no
"system", but several criteria are considered when choosing a word
root.  How well it fits the phonology and morphology are first
considered.  Then I look at familiarity to see how easily the word can
be recognized, or at least memorized, which means getting words from
popular languages as much as possible.  The word also has to be
checked against existing vocabulary to avoid homophones, and
near-homophones if possible.  Diversity is also a consideration in
Sasxsek.  Attempts are being made to balance the load so each each
student starts off on roughly an equal footing, though I realize it's
not possible to make things 100% fair, except for maybe going with a
completely a priori lexicon.

>  > Or my own, Sasxsek.  (shameless plug)
>
> Why not, indeed?    :)
>
> I notice with interest:
>   Acadon: citabo /kitabo/ = "book"
I couldn't find anything decribing the language on the site.


> Sasxsek: kitab = "book"
>      LdP: kitaba = "book"
"kitab" (or some variation of it) is a word known to many people
across several popular languages.  It was a natural choice for
Sasxsek, not just for it's popularity, but also because it fits the
CVCVC worshape perfectly whereas roots like "libr" or "bibl" didn't
fit well at all.  I've pasted the Sasxsek etymology below (UTF-8 will
probably get lost on the way, but the Romanizations are still there).

 	 arb ?????? (kitab); azj kitab; bak ????? (kitap); hin ?????
(kitaba); ind kitab; kaz ????? (kitab); kir ????? (kitap); mdf
(kitap); mlt ktieb; pan ????? (kitaba); pes ???? (kitab); pus kitab;
swa kitabu; tat ????? (kitap); tgk kitob; tuk (kitap); tur kitap; urd
???? (kitab)