tsali

zo tsali cu lojbo cmene zoi ny. Arnt Richard Johansen .ny.

I don't know why he calls himself "tsali" --John Cowan

OK; here is the story of how I chose my name.

Basically, it is because I found my name too hard to Lojbanize. The native pronunciation of my name (in SAMPA) is ['A:n`t` 'r\ikAd` ju'hAnsn,_]. Both the lojbanization according to pronunciation (.ant. rikad. .iu'ansn) and the lojbanization according to orthography (.arnt. rikard. .iuxansn) are unacceptable to me.

Therefore I decided to translate my name, and turned to a naming dictionary to find out what my name originally meant. Apparently, "Arnt" means "eagle", and "Richard" means powerful. To my dismay, there is no shorter word for "eagle" in Lojban than cpirAKuila. So I decided to stick with my second first name, and named myself tsali.

--mi'e tsali

isn't vlipa closer to "powerful" than tsali? --jay

Possibly. In fact, now that you mention it, I'm not entirely sure the dictionary said "powerful" or "strong".

I always thought of {vlipa} as something like "good at something". "mi vlipa tu'a la lojban .i ku'i mi na'e vlipa le nu cpare" But in any case, it's too late to do anything about it now. --mi'e tsali

My opinion on cultural gismu/lujvo vs. cultural fu'ivla:

I disagree with the notion that the creation of cultural gismu gives
certain cultures (those with their own gismu) an advantage over others
(without cultural gismu) in Lojban usage. This hinges on the assumption
that gismu space is special, and that selbri that were created as gismu
are somwhat more important than other words. I don't think this was ever
the intention of the gismu list.

If the word form of cultural gismu does matter, it must be because of
Zipfean shortness. But I don't see the fact that some cultural words
are longer than others as a threat to Lojban's cultural neutrality. If
they were, surely there would have to be other much worse abominations
in the gismu list, as it, too, was created without any form of semantic
theory. Those are probably much more difficult to find, as they are
hidden to us because of Sapir-Whorfean assumptions, but nevertheless,
cultural gismu get attacked because they are easy to spot.

I dislike people creating fu'ivla such as "steito", or even wresting
"glicybau" out of lujvo-space with such non-words as "gli'icybau", in a
misguided attempt to put all cultures on an equal footing.

In short, I don't consider this matter important enough to warrant
neither a baseline change or making communication in Lojban more
difficult and prone to misunderstandings.

Who is removing "glicybau" from lujvo space? Not I. And I'm the one who made gli'icybau, which you're so worked up about. I just want cultural fu'ivla to be valid, I'm not trying to say that cultural gismu ought not be valid. (As that would compromise the baseline!) --Jay
Also, what is the cultural brivla for Norwegian? How are you going to make lujvo with it? (Now now, you can't say "norgo", as that is a non-word.) In the end, we're going to be using cultural fu'ivla/rafsi for most of the world's cultures. I just want things symmetric. --Jay
- I believe the cultural brivla for Norwegian to be "bangrnorge", "kulnrnorge" or "prenrnorge". In the rare event that it is needed in a fu'ivla, "zei" is more than sufficient. --tsali

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Tsali is also a Cherokee who became legendary as well as a recreation area in North Carolina.