Re: Chemical elements proposal (longish)

[cowan (John Cowan)]

iVAN. derjanskis. writes:
> Who cares for
> metaphorical uses of words?  I really hope you don't intend {nikle} to be
> used for the US 5c coin, which most of the world has never seen!
> 
> To avoid being accused in malglicoism or malmerkoism, will you
> please give, for each of the other five source languages, an example of
> an element that has entered the list because of a metaphorical usage in
> that language.

There is undoubtedly a great deal of glico bias (and even merko bias) in
the gismu list.  It's the product of raw empiricism, nothing more.
However, "metaphor" is the very basis of including a word as a gismu rather
than allowing it to remain a le'avla.  Borrowings do not enter into lujvo,
but otherwise they are full-fledged Lojban brivla.  In general, a word
should be a gismu if good and useful tanru can be made from it.

Naturally, I can't present a list such as Ivan requires.  But then, after all,
some of the concepts on the gismu list barely exist in the source languages.
There is no commonly used Chinese word for "brown", but Lojban has a word
(the Chinese component comes from the dictionary, but it's rare in either
speech or writing).
-- 
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban