This document describes the reconstructed Russian 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 Russian source word is dubious or missing; these cases are marked by a comment with the string “FIXIT”
The “Russian etymology of Lojban” in plain text and in HTML format as well as the conversion script were prepared by mublin in April 2008. The content of these three files is hereby placed irrevocably in the public domain.
English translations of Russian source words, where present, are from N. Korolew's Russian-English Dictionary and the English Wiktionary, the content of which is under the GNU Free Documentation License. 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 Russian source word is given in bold red, together with ISO9:1995 transliteration.
If present, English translations from Korolew's dictionary and the English Wiktionary start each on their own line.
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 “sorgu, tunba, and vlagi” do not have a Russian source word in the original gismu etymology file; these are included with a comment.
Some gismu have two or three Russian source words; each of these gets its own line. These gismu are “xruba, venfu, tcena, tamne, derxi, dekpu, cinje, benji, zunti, zungi, zukte, zmadu, zirpu, zbasu, xrula, xirma, xarju, xaksu, xagji, troci, toknu, terdi, sumti, stici, stani, sruma, sombo, simsa, sfubu, rinju, renvi, remna, ralci, ractu, purci, punji, penbi, pagre, pagbu, nurma, notci, lunra, litru, kuspe, klina, klama, karce, kanji, juxre, jurme, jukpa, jorne, jivbu, jimte, jibri, jgalu, jdari, jarco, gunka, gugde, grana, gleki, gismu, genja, galxe, fuzme, fusra, fulta, finti, fenso, fenki, fengu, dukse, dimna, dicra, denmi, dembi, dakli, dacti, curnu, curmi, cumla, cteki, ctaru, crepu, cpedu, cokcu, cnici, cliva, ckire, citka, cinla, cindu, cikna, cevni, cecmu, cecla, cange, binxo, bargu, bapli, banro, bancu, badri, and bacru.”
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 Russian 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.
Russian 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 Russian aspell package was used to find source words by phonetic correspondence. A small script was used to convert Lojbanisations to regular expressions.
Other useful tools were a list of Russian units of measurement and a list of Russian prefixes. ISO9:1995 transliteration was achieved with a script and in accordance with the description on the corresponding Wikipedia article.
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 Russian 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.
Mon Apr 7 19:52:48 CEST 2008