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Bene veni, Troy

Gary R Miller (Gary R Miller <justi.miller@...>) on May 23, 2010

Karo Troy,

I’ve been studying Glosa [url=http://www.glosa.org/en/g18s.htm#S4]here[/url] for a day or two now and i like what i see, but i have a few questions, mostly about the vocabulary.

it seems to be sorta incomplete and ambiguous to me. for one i cant find any words for clothing except for ‘underwear’ (???) which apparently is also the word ‘shirt’ (??????). though i imagine some of them wouldn’t be too hard to conjure up (manu-ve, pedi-ve, nekto-ve, somni-ve etc…) it doesn’t appear to have a word for ‘pants’.

-> INTRA-VE should mean “underwear,” not “shirt.” “Shirt” should be SUPRA-TUNIKA, and I have also seen SUPRA-VE used– This was probably the original intent instead of INTRA-VE. Thank you for pointing this out.

-> Hurray! You’re thinking like a fellow American! Try looking up “trousers” instead (PODA-VE).

another is the ambiguity i’m coming across. like for example, dictionary here lists three different words for ‘sleep’: sopo, dormi, and somni. even though the dictionary recommends only using somni, for some odd reason the word for ‘to go to sleep’ is sit sopo. another odd when is tura and trakto, both of which mean ‘to pull’ and both are recommended equally (the dictionary has plus signs next to all the words to show which ones are preferred).

-> Glosa, unlike some planned languages, has a STRUCTURED VOCABULARY as well. Any word root taken from a technical term can be used as a word in Glosa. Yes, SOMNI is preferred, and logically STI SOMNI would be preferred to STI SOPO, but I can’t say STI SOPO is wrong.

-> And, yes, the planning is not yet complete. The Glosa Internet Dictionary (GID) has very thoroughly been compiled from many different Glosa textbooks, but still needs some refining.

-> One thing the texts have said so far is that the Greek roots (marked with “G” in the GID) should be preferred over the Latin roots. Regarding TRAKTO (from Latin) vs. TIRA (derived from modern words)– this still needs to be worked out. The tendency I have noticed so far is that TRAKTO means “drag” and TIRA means “pull.”

if you care, here’s the dictionary I’m using, the main glosa page claims it’s the most comprehensive dictionary on the web for glosa:

[url]http://www.glosa.org/gid/engl.htm[/url]

-> Thank you for your interest in Glosa. The GID is the largest and most up-to-date dictionary.

is it really that reliable? the thing claims the word for ‘left-handed’ is just ‘laevo’.

-> This is correct. Glosa words have very broad meanings. To avoid ambiguity, one may sometimes need to say for “left-handed”, “U CEFA MANU ES U LAEVO,” or something similar. Glosa uses words to communicate rather than grammatical affixes, as some IAL’s do; in other words, you have to say what you mean. (Hey, “left hand” in English doesn’t necessarily refer only to dexterity either!)

-> Information on ordering hard copies of Glosa books can be found at glosa.org.

Saluta, _ _ /. /\ Gary

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Bene veni, Troy - Committee on language planning, FIAS. Coordination: Vergara & Hardy, PhDs.