Talk:gism

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If we did this, we would have to redo the gismu creation process to keep the same mnemonic advantage. I would agree with you, if it weren't already a very important part of the baseline - and one whose violation would result in everything I have ever written in the language becoming meaningless (at best). ki'ai nabjol! - mi'e. .kreig.daniyl.

Yes, well, the same could be argued for pretty much any natural language. But in fact, the potential reform would not render meaningless your entire work; it would make it easier for others to make their own works, but yours would remain intact. We don't necessarily have to change all the endings to "a"--all that is really necessary is dropping the necessity of using the arbitrary endings already assigned. Maybe the final letter should be a matter of choice. If it's easier for you to remember "gismu" than just "gism-", go ahead and use that, but don't restrict others' right to say "gismi". If we're going to assign endings arbitrarily, we might as well not fix them permanently.

Yes, but if you are going to assign them non-arbitrarily, then we should fix them permanently. You seem to have convieniently forgotten everything I said above when you went to respond to it. If you are told that it is vanj then you are not going to think of saying vanju just because it fits with the chinese word. However, a Chinese speaker will find vanju easier to remember than vanj, just as I at least find bangu easier to remember than bang. The reform that would render my writing meaningless is to provide the same level of aid by doing the whole process over again without including the final vowel.

Not that we are restricting your right to say 'gismi' and be understood, as the final vowel is redundant and people will know you meant gismu, it is just that it is nonstandard. This is a Good Thing, as it also provides error-checking. When I wrote cuska in round two of the broken phone game, Pierre knew I had screwed up. He also knew that it was equally likely to be cusku as ciska. He was right, typos do not conform to the morphology of the typoer's language unless they think in words (which I do not). So, under your proposal, ko'a cmala will be interpreted as ko'a is small, when in fact it may very well be a typo of ko'a laughs; in a world of perfect typosts you would be absolutely right but there is no such beast - even the best writer makes a mistake every once in a while. Do you want mistakes to be meaning-altering with this frequency? Or would you rather have the spell check notice that you would under your proposal have just said the opposite of what you meant? And do you really want to destroy the broda-series?'

Since you do not like to respond to more than the last sentence of my posts (in case you didn't bother to read this one either it is noted up above that you ignored most of my previous comment) I am hereby not adding any content whatsoever to this sentence, except to remind you that you ought to read the entirity of both posts because otherwise your next response will make you sound like an idiot. - mi'e. .kreig.daniyl.

ni'o .e'a .i ku'i finti le gismu zo'e lo valsi bei le no'e logji bangu ja'e le nu no'e logji