Biological taxonomy and other 'esoteric' vocabularies like chemical nomenclature

[RexScientiarum]

I noticed under the words list that there are some very preliminary attempts to 'lojbanize' (or 'lojbanise' depending on where you are from) nomenclature systems like taxonomic names and chemical compounds (as in IUPAC).  How exactly does one approach discussing such topics in Lojban and at this point is there any consensus?  Are there proposed 'special systems' like there is for mathematics (I imagine there will have to be).

I assume these things will eventually have to be 'lojbanized' as the language grows (and theoretically/hopefully is used by more people in more situations) and although nomenclature systems like IUPAC are global standards names still very by language and orthography (honestly I don't really know exactly how chemical nomenclature works in non-English speaking countries; my understanding is that most countries now default to 'English' nomenclature now, there is still a Spanish, Japanese, Chinese IUPAC equivalent).  'Technically' speaking, taxonomic nomenclature isn't even singularly regulated under one convention (I would use ITIS as a reference point if an attempt was ever made to lojbanize taxonomy).  

Anyway, IF there was a consensus that there is a need to discuss such things natively in lojban (rather than defaulting to English IUPAC or some form of Roman alphabet based linnaean taxonomy) something would have to change because non lojban characters, pronounciation, pairs etc. exist in these systems, so unless lojban speakers would use some sort of tag to say: "default to English IUPAC" or similar (which seems rather malglico to me), the system would have to change.

Idk, I am a junior undergraduate biology major so I don't even pretend to have some sort of truly esoteric understanding of such things, so I hope someone with more knowledge of both lojban and the natural sciences exists somewhere in the community that could answer this or at least discuss/share ideas about this.

[Pierre Abbat]

All languages (except Latin itself, and maybe Greek from which many taxonomic
roots come) treat biological taxonomic names the same way: they are marked as
foreign (at least genus and species names) and (usually) undeclined. I know of
two exceptions, virus species names and some unranked taxa of plants like
rosids, both of which are in English, at least in English. Common names, such
as English "geranium" and Lojban "plargoni", can be derived from (or in
Romance languages, inherited from, such as Spanish "aves" and "avena")
scientific names, but may not have the same taxonomic extent.

Chemical nomenclature is a quite different beast. An IUPAC name of a
complicated organic chemical is very much like a long lujvo, and very unlike
the typical word formations of Indo-European and Semitic languages, which
consist of a root, or a few roots joined together in IE, with a bunch of
prefixes, suffixes, and inflections stuck on. I think, therefore, that IUPAC
should be done with lujvo in Lojban. But there isn't much room left for all
the affixes used in IUPAC. There are at least three ways numbers are used in
IUPAC: the oxidation state or valence of an atom, the number of copies of a
group in a molecule, and the atom to which a group is attached; and it's not
clear to me how to distinguish them in Lojban. Take for instance 1,1,1-
trichloro-2,2-di(4-chlorophenyl)ethane (aka DDT). The numerals denote which
atom the chlorines and phenyls are attached to; the "di" and "tri" prefixes
mean there are three chlorines and two chlorophenyls attached to the ethane.

Pierre
--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.

[RexScientiarum]

Yeah, I know on the taxonomy.  What I meant was that it is (sort of) regulated by by several groups like ICN (formerly ICBN) and ICZN, among others.  But w/e, that is probably irrelevant (I'll explain why I even brought it up later). Still, my main question is how do we talk about these sorts of things in lojban?  Is there a cmavo that says: "Binomial follows'? or 'IUPAC preffered name follows'? Or do we just use {la}, {la'o}, and {zoi} or w/e?  

I HAD assumed that taxonomy, at least, would be treated in one of those two ways (because, as you said, it is always treated as a foreign language, hence why it is italicized in print or supposed to be underlined when handwritten) but it looks as if other community members have already begun to lojbanize taxonomic names so I thought MAYBE there is some feeling that there is a need to lojbanize biological classification for whatever reason (which is why I ask, and I thought maybe there was some feeling that the current Linnaean method based primarily on Latin and some Greek and written in the Roman alphabet wasn't a universal, culturally/scientifically unbiased method. Idk, just trying to understand/rationalize why someone thought there had to be a lojban name for eubacteria {fadjurme} and the like).

As far as IUPAC goes, all I meant was that I don't know how IUPAC works exactly in other languages, other than the fact that it is different from IUPAC nomenclature in English.  I don't need a description of how to IUPAC naming works, at least in English, I already know how that works.  Maybe I was a bit misleading when I said I didn't have an esoteric understanding of because I DO understand it, I just wouldn't claim to be an expert qualified to write the lojban IUPAC rules and that hopefully some well respected career chemist happened to speak lojban and WOULD be qualified to write the lojban IUPAC rules.  I was trying to be humble; of course now I am probably needlessly getting defensive over my 'geek' ego but so be it.  I know you weren't trying to be derogatory or anything so please don't take anything I say in a bad way.  As far as speaking lojban, however, I AM in fact a complete 'noob'.  (It is a good point you made though about how unlike Indo-European languages IUPAC nomenclature is)

Anyway...I digress, so lets continue.  Because IUPAC names are language specific (despite the fact that the English is becoming more universally accepted) it seems DOES seem malglico to just default to English IUPAC (malglico for the same reasons Robin listed in his essay here: http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words/ial.html that English shouldn't be an International Auxiliary Language).

As you said there isn't much room left in lojban for all the affixes (which I had suspected might be the case) used in IUPAC nomenclature.  As mentioned earlier, I am a complete lojban 'noob' so this might be a stupid question but is there some way that a cmavo or something could be used to denote "Hey we're talking about a chemical nomenclature here!" and thus allow the 'grammar' rules within the limiters to be tweaked to be more IUPAC friendly while still keeping the nomenclature 'lojbanic' in the sense that it is unique to lojban, uses lojban valsi and characters (in w/e orthography), and phonology? Would not a similar system be viable for, say, a unique lojban taxonomy as well?  (Since it seems, as mentioned earlier, that some lojban speakers [not me necessarily] appear to think biological taxonomy needs to be lojbanized as well.) 

Wasn't there some sort of system similar to this idea proposed for a Polish math system or w/e? (Not that I know what that is, Polish math I mean.  I am guessing that it has to do with the fact that math terminology isn't actually universal, something like the difference between British and a US billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc.?).  Now I probably am sounding really stupid but you'll just have to forgive me for being the ignorant American here and not knowing what Polish math is.

[RexScientiarum]

My god, I rambled a lot...

[Arnt Richard Johansen]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2012 at 02:43:07PM -0800, RexScientiarum wrote:
>
> I HAD assumed that taxonomy, at least, would be treated in one of those two
> ways (because, as you said, it is always treated as a foreign language,

> hence why it is italicized in print or *supposed *to be underlined when

> handwritten) but it looks as if other community members have already begun
> to lojbanize taxonomic names so I thought MAYBE there is some feeling that
> there is a need to lojbanize biological classification for whatever reason
> (which is why I ask, and I thought maybe there was some feeling that the
> current Linnaean method based primarily on Latin and some Greek and written
> in the Roman alphabet wasn't a universal, culturally/scientifically
> unbiased method. Idk, just trying to understand/rationalize why someone
> thought there had to be a lojban name for eubacteria {fadjurme} and the
> like).

I think the idea is that a language needs ordinary terms for species (ie. words like “bullfinch”, not words like “Pyrrhula pyrrhula”). In the cases were a gismu is not adequate, a new word needs to be created, and the word needs to come from somewhere. Often, the scientific name is an easily available source to make a new word from. That doesn't mean that the new word is a _translation_ or _corresponds with_ or _is used the same way as_ the Linnean binomial, just that it's based on that term, rather than a word from some particular language.

--
Arnt Richard Johansen http://arj.nvg.org/
På 1300-tallet kom tersen. Før og etter det var det meste bare rot, men
så kom Schönberg og ordnet opp. Puh. Endelig litt system. Så klarte Arne
Nordheim å rote det til igjen. -- Under Dusken 08/2001

[Pierre Abbat]

On Wednesday, March 07, 2012 17:43:07 RexScientiarum wrote:
> Yeah, I know on the taxonomy. What I meant was that it is (sort of)
> regulated by by several groups like ICN (formerly ICBN) and ICZN, among
> others. But w/e, that is probably irrelevant (I'll explain why I even
> brought it up later). Still, my main question is how do we talk about these
> sorts of things in lojban? Is there a cmavo that says: "Binomial follows'?
> or 'IUPAC preffered name follows'? Or do we just use {la}, {la'o}, and
> {zoi} or w/e?

To stick a taxonomic name, we use "la'o"; that is in fact what it was first
used for (it derives from "latmo"). As to IUPAC, I don't know yet.

> I HAD assumed that taxonomy, at least, would be treated in one of those two
> ways (because, as you said, it is always treated as a foreign language,

> hence why it is italicized in print or *supposed *to be underlined when

> handwritten) but it looks as if other community members have already begun
> to lojbanize taxonomic names so I thought MAYBE there is some feeling that
> there is a need to lojbanize biological classification for whatever reason
> (which is why I ask, and I thought maybe there was some feeling that the
> current Linnaean method based primarily on Latin and some Greek and written
> in the Roman alphabet wasn't a universal, culturally/scientifically
> unbiased method. Idk, just trying to understand/rationalize why someone
> thought there had to be a lojban name for eubacteria {fadjurme} and the
> like).

If you say "lo strepsiptera" or "lo frangula", you're using a common name that
happens to be the same (except for capitalization) as the scientific name for
the same thing, just as if you say "an octopus" or "la salvia". There are
ornithologists who have compiled lists of common names for every bird they can
think of, so if someone talks about an American Robin or a Black Rail, we know
they mean the same as a particular scientific name. I don't think we need to do
that in Lojban, or could easily; Lojban doesn't have a lot of preexisting
names for birds, fish, or mammals.

> As far as IUPAC goes, all I meant was that I don't know how IUPAC works
> exactly in other languages, other than the fact that it is different from
> IUPAC nomenclature in English. I don't need a description of how to IUPAC
> naming works, at least in English, I already know how that works. Maybe I
> was a bit misleading when I said I didn't have an esoteric understanding of
> because I DO understand it, I just wouldn't claim to be an expert qualified
> to write the lojban IUPAC rules and that hopefully some well
> respected career chemist happened to speak lojban and WOULD be qualified to
> write the lojban IUPAC rules. I was trying to be humble; of course now I
> am probably needlessly getting defensive over my 'geek' ego but so be it.
> I know you weren't trying to be derogatory or anything so please don't
> take anything I say in a bad way. As far as speaking lojban, however, I AM
> in fact a complete 'noob'. (It is a good point you made though about how
> unlike Indo-European languages IUPAC nomenclature is)

I don't know IUPAC well enough to translate it to Lojban. Do you know it well
enough that together we could?

> As you said there isn't much room left in lojban for all the affixes (which
> I had suspected might be the case) used in IUPAC nomenclature. As
> mentioned earlier, I am a complete lojban 'noob' so this might be a stupid
> question but is there some way that a cmavo or something could be used to
> denote "Hey we're talking about a chemical nomenclature here!" and thus
> allow the 'grammar' rules within the limiters to be tweaked to be more
> IUPAC friendly while still keeping the nomenclature 'lojbanic' in the sense
> that it is unique to lojban, uses lojban valsi and characters (in w/e
> orthography), and phonology? Would not a similar system be viable for, say,
> a unique lojban taxonomy as well? (Since it seems, as mentioned earlier,
> that some lojban speakers [not me necessarily] appear to think biological
> taxonomy needs to be lojbanized as well.)

I've considered using "tau" for "ide" (e.g. "tabno relkijytau"), as "tanru"
means a binary compound phrase. It should be obvious from the presence of
words for chemical elements, rather than words for words, what kind of binary
compound is meant.

By the way, what does "w/e" mean?

Pierre

--
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci

[selpa'i]

Am 08.03.2012 19:22, schrieb Pierre Abbat:
> By the way, what does "w/e" mean? Pierre

w/e = whatever (as well as "whoever, whenever" etc.)

Similarly, "w/" = with, "w/o" = without

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

--
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla

[RexScientiarum]

I don't know IUPAC well enough to translate it to Lojban. Do you know it well 
enough that together we could? 

Probably, with a lot of work that is.  I don't think I could translate all the large molecule nomenclature at this point but I do have to take some biochem classes in these next semesters so I will be learning about those in detail in the next 2 or 3 semesters (Like I said, I know how the system works, just not an expert...not yet anyway).  Obviously the lojban is going to be the hardest part for me, you you certainly seem to be pretty fluent in lojban though so between the two two of us and maybe some other help I bet we could do it if you want to make a project of it.

As for giving specific common names to animals I think that there probably is room for that sort of specificity in lojban.  There SHOULD be, I think, otherwise I wouldn't see any point in learning it (learning a language with that sort of limitation).  Exactly how it might be possible I am not certain of at this point in my lojban education but I have some ideas. I see that there is, in fact, a lujvo for the American Robin specifically in jbovlaste by gejyspa (who I am guessing might actually be a biologist judging by the definitions he has entered in jbovlaste).

Anyway, I knew about {la'o} and I kind of figured that would be the preferred way of marking that.  I was just sort of hopping that if there would be some sort of 'special' way to denote it so maybe it would be considered 'special' or maybe so that it wouldn't look so messy in an alternate orthography. Like a way to denote that it would be phonetically lojbanized Latin or something to keep with w/e constructed orthography in use.  Alternately it might be possible to add in extra glyphs in said orthography that might correspond to the non lerfu inf the Roman alphabet [namely h,q,and w] if there was a desire to not have to revert to a Roman orthography. Of course even if at some point in the likely FAR future Lojban does become relatively widely used language it still seems pretty unlikely that a non Roman alphabet orthography will ever be commonplace so that whole issue is moot.  Yeah...

By the way w/e is shorthand for 'whatever', it is like an 'lol' or 'gtg' sort of thing (I rarely use texting abbreviations in general but for some reason I do use 'w/e', specifically, a lot. Don't know why, it just somehow became a habit of mine).

[RexScientiarum]

Right, I was thing about that and after I made the post and came to the same conclusion, that the translations were in a general, non linnaean sense.

[Jacob Errington]

I have to agree with Pierre on this. Lojban is meant to be culturally neutral (albeit however that in some places it isn't quite as neutral as it should or could be) which means that any common names that are based on those of another language aren't appropriate. Lojban's "common names" for plants and animals are simply based on the Linnean names. 

I've had this discussion before in #lojban, and the conclusion seemed to be that, yes, although it is strange to see linnean names in common speech at first, it isn't any more far-fetched for a ten-year-old to say "chamomille" than it is to say {xrulnrekutita}. In fact, having the "common name" be, I repeat, based on the Linnean name would probably prove to be advantageous for a lojbanist biologist, as while studying, that lojbanist wouldn't have to double his or her vocabulary, learning the Linnean names and then mapping them to the common names.

As for la'o, I didn't know/forgot that it was based on latmo (makes sense though, [latmo]'s only rafsi is -la'o-). Regardless, one must choose the delimiter for the non-lojban quote. Simply choose a meaningful delimiter. [i ti me la'o line'an. rosa kordesii line'an], or if you're a cmevla-hater like me, it's possible to use some brivla as the delimiter, such as [la'ocme] or [la'o] again or simply [latmo] or even [ly], if from context it's obvious that it's a Latin/Linnean name.

mu'o mi'e la tsani

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[Pierre Abbat]

On Thursday, March 08, 2012 19:47:08 Jacob Errington wrote:
> I have to agree with Pierre on this. Lojban is meant to be culturally
> neutral (albeit however that in some places it isn't quite as neutral as it
> should or could be) which means that any common names that are based on
> those of another language aren't appropriate. Lojban's "common names" for

> plants and animals are simply *based on* the Linnean names.

> I've had this discussion before in #lojban, and the conclusion seemed to be
> that, yes, although it is strange to see linnean names in common speech at
> first, it isn't any more far-fetched for a ten-year-old to say "chamomille"
> than it is to say {xrulnrekutita}. In fact, having the "common name" be, I

> repeat, *based on* the Linnean name would probably prove to be advantageous

> for a lojbanist biologist, as while studying, that lojbanist wouldn't have
> to double his or her vocabulary, learning the Linnean names and then
> mapping them to the common names.

There are several species of chamomile; the other one that I was aware of is
Anthemis nobilis. M. recutita is German or blue chamomile, of which I have
some EO in a bottle (the flower is yellow and white, but a blue color develops
in distillation). It's also called M. chamomilla.

I think they should be based on Linnean names or natlang (usually local)
common names, depending on various factors. Here are some examples:

*"salmone" includes both salmon and trout. The type genus is Salmo; the common
name in English, French, and Spanish comes from the same word.

*"rutrxananase" comes from the genus name Ananas, which is used as a common
name in Portuguese (PT but not BR), French, and Russian. A few weeks ago I
discussed with a Portuguese and a Hispanic about this (Brazilians call it
"abacaxi", but it's a different variety), and the Hispanic asked what an ananas
was. I told her it's a pi�a, having forgotten that not everyone knows the
word. For brevity in Lojban, though, I call it "bromeli", which also applies
to other plants in the family.

*"arxokuna", "lumge'u", and "prokiono" are synonyms. The first is from some
Algonquian language which also gave the English common name; the last is from
the genus name.

*"luodna" is from Icelandic. The capelin swims around Iceland and to nearby
islands.

*"takside" is from the genus name of a badger, which has cognates such as
Dachs.

*"frangula" is from the species name, which does not appear to be the species
name of anything but buckthorn.

*I once considered calling the artichoke "skolimo", but there's also a genus
Scolymus, which perhaps should get that word. Instead I call it "xarcufu",
which is from the Arabic source of the common names in much of Europe.

*"fi'orxruki" is so called because it's African and its species same is the
same as the turkey's genus name. Both are in the order Galliformes.

*"ma'arjipci" is a translation from Japanese.

Pierre
--
sei do'anai mi'a djuno puze'e noroi nalselganse srera

[RexScientiarum]

Ah-ha!!!  I looked up la'o (CLL 19.10) and I understand now that la'o is SPECIFICALLY for linnaean binomials.  The ONLY time one might use la'o for something other than a binomial is if it was a term recognized more by it's spelling than it's pronunciation  across languages (and only in writing I assume), otherwise names are supposed to be lojbanized and the cmavo la used.  I didn't get that before... obviously.  Only internationally standardized names are used with la'o.  Well, in that case (besides IUPAC) lojban really does have a contingency for EVERYTHING.  Cool. Thanks.

[Michael Turniansky]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 5:46 PM, RexScientiarum <amt...@gmail.com> wrote:

As for giving specific common names to animals I think that there probably is room for that sort of specificity in lojban.  There SHOULD be, I think, otherwise I wouldn't see any point in learning it (learning a language with that sort of limitation).  Exactly how it might be possible I am not certain of at this point in my lojban education but I have some ideas. I see that there is, in fact, a lujvo for the American Robin specifically in jbovlaste by gejyspa (who I am guessing might actually be a biologist judging by the definitions he has entered in jbovlaste).

 

  Ahh, no.  I am not.  I'm a computer programmer.   I'm familiar with taxa as much as the next guy.  But because as my role in the language department of the cantr roleplaying game (cantr.org) I had to translate many animal names, I had to create many of them myself (especially those that Pierre's wide net hadn't caught), especially those that had to be distinguished from other, similar ones in cantr.  Depending on the case, I based my translations on either the Linnean name, used a tanru (which you won't see in jbovlaste), used fu'ivla from other languages (rarely a choice for me, unless the name seemed to be either pretty widespread or the animal was confined to a locally small area so the native name could be used (and the latter usual implies the former as well) (these would be what used to be called in Loglan I-prims and N-prims)), or a combination if a whole larger grouping (taxon, clade, or informal) was implied, and I needed specificity), or lujvo, in which I had to ask myself "is there a characteristic of this animal that is a hallmark/uniquish to this creature that would serve to identify it, as opposed to another,  to someone who is  familiar with the animal, without too much difficulty?" To answer  this question, I read up on the animals, and also sometimes took inspiration from the meaning of their binomials.

                     --gejyspa