This document describes the reconstructed Hindi etymology of Lojban, which is available in the original plain text format and in HTML format, generated by a conversion script. In some cases, the reconstructed Hindi source word is dubious or missing; these cases are marked by a comment with the string “FIXIT”
I would like to acknowledge Maneesh Soni from the English Hindi Dictionary site www.shabdkosh.com for kindly providing a large list of Hindi translations to help in reconstructing the Hindi source words.
Any inaccuracies in the etymology are, of course, entirely the responsibility of the author. In particular, the English translations given in the present etymology have been compiled from various dictionaries by the author and should not be seen as generally valid and reliable translations of the Hindi words.
The “Hindi etymology of Lojban” in plain text and in HTML format as well as the conversion script were prepared by mublin in May 2008. The content of these three files is hereby placed irrevocably in the public domain.
The official gismu list, prepared by The Logical Language Group, Inc., is in the public domain.
In the generated HTML version, each gismu is given in bold, followed by the English keyword and the Lojbanised source word on one line.
On the next line, the reconstructed Hindi source word is given in bold red, together with ISO 15919 transliteration, and English translation.
If present, a comment starts on a new line in smaller font.
The plain text file is encoded in UTF-8 with UNIX style line breaks. Each gismu has one line with TAB-separated fields, in the following format:
The gismu “cicna, sorgu, tujli, vrude, and xruba” do not have a Hindi source word in the original gismu etymology file; these are included with a comment.
Some gismu have more than one Hindi source words; each of these gets its own line. The gismu “lumci and jinto” have five Hindi source words; the gismu “boxfo” has four Hindi source words; the gismu “xagji, xabju, vlile, venfu, tirxu, tikpa, sisku, pezli, limna, labno, jenca, girzu, frili, foldi, desku, cinse, cfila, cedra, betri” have three Hindi source words; and the gismu “bakfu, bargu, bisli, blabi, brife, bukpu, cidni, cinla, cinmo, ckilu, ckini, cladu, cmima, cmoni, cnebo, cpina, curnu, dansu, denpa, dinju, dirgo, dizlo, fendi, fengu, fenra, fenso, ferti, flani, flecu, forca, fukpi, galtu, gapru, genxu, gradu, gunro, jdini, jetnu, jgira, judri, jurme, kagni, kojna, kruca, kulnu, lazni, lenku, lerfu, melbi, mensi, mixre, mlana, mudri, muvdu, nazbi, pelji, pinfu, pinta, plipe, pluka, polje, ponse, pritu, purmo, rimni, rirni, risna, rokci, runme, sitna, snura, stedu, tcidu, terpa, tinbe, tubnu, turni, verba, vipsi, vrusi, xagri, xenru, xlali, xrula, xutla, zirpu, zungi, zunle, zvati” have two Hindi source words.
The etymology does not include the cultural gismu, the gismu “broda, brode, brodi, brodo, brodu” which have been constructed from “bridi”, and other gismu which have not been generated from the six source languages.
The following conventions are used inside the comment field:
The list of gismu with English keyword and the Hindi source words in Lojbanised form was obtained from the gismu etymology file. This file lists source language words in a Lojbanised form, in ASCII, without inflectional endings and with affricates reduced to simple spirants; and a few other rules, some of them source-language specific.
Hindi source words were searched both by semantic correspondence with the Lojban gismu (or rather, their English translations), and phonetic correspondence with the Lojbanised form of the source word. The following dictionaries were searched for semantic correspondence:
The wordlist distributed with the Hindi aspell package was used to find source words by phonetic correspondence.
The most important etymological source for Lojban is the list of gismu with Lojbanised source words and scores. The format of this file is described in detail in this message to the Lojban mailing list and the file etysample.txt on the Lojban server. Additional information can be found at the Lojban Etymology wiki page, on the Lojban file server and in this directory on the Lojban server.
The gismu generation process is described in more detail in “What is Lojban?”, ch. 4, sec. 17, and in the “Reference Grammar”, ch. 4, sec. 14.
The gismu “mleca” (less) is listed as “ckamu” in the original etymology file; it was changed in 1990 according to the etymology file itself. Similary, the gismu “donri” (daytime) is listed as “dinri”; it was changed in 1993 as reported by the minutes of the LLG. Both gismu are listed in the newer form here.
The following gismu are missing in the gismu etymology file: “gocti” (yocto), “gotro” (yotta), “zepti” (zepto), “zetro” (zetta), “slovo” (Slavic), and “vukro” (Ukrainian); the latter two were added in 1993 as reported by the minutes of the LLG. The gismu “mexco” (Mexican) was changed to “mexno” (see this message to the Lojban list). None of these gismu were generated from the six source languages, so this does not affect the Hindi etymology.
The correspondence between Lojban gismu and TLI Loglan, which is also of etymological interest, is described in detail in the file oldlog.txt on the Lojban server.
Sun May 4 16:58:56 CEST 2008