soweli

[AcipenserSturio]

soweli

sona pu

NOUN animal, beast, land mammal

sona Linku pi toki Inli

animal, beast, land mammal

sona Linku pi toki pona

jan en akesi en waso en kala en pipi li sama soweli li ken soweli; soweli mute li ken tawa li ken moku li ken unpa li ken pilin li ken moli

sona ku

animal⁵, deer⁵, creature⁴, dog⁴, cat⁴, llama³, goat³, Musteloidea³, beast³, lion³, pig², capybara², wolf², horse², mouse (2020)², tiger², large domesticated animal², Hominidae², procyonid², monkey², rabbit²

sona sin

[AcipenserSturio]

Discussion starters from me:

i feel like ""land mammal"" has become more accepted than ""animal"

"beast"" tends to carry connotations of big/predator/scary

what about furries?

[lipamanka]

I would like to draw attention away from english taxonomy here. I studied folk taxonomies in college and I think using descriptions of qualities that soweli have is far more effective than using a category very specific to english with a scientific definition.

I DO think that "beast" carries those connotations, but it could still be a good example to include in the definition.

hm. what about furries.

ANYWAY here is my proposed rework: running animal, furry animal, warm animal

imo these are the three most important traits of soweli. when they want to move fast, they use their legs, i.e. running. They are almost always furry or fuzzy in some way, and they are indeed always warm to the touch. Let me know if there's any disagreement here. I like this one a lot though.

[AcipenserSturio]

I think its a fun approach that expands on Sonja's usage of land mammal instead of just mammal. One issue I foresee is people are gonna start treating those descriptions as too literally, rather than as rough vibes - in which case we're gonna encounter "parked car is a sitelen" problems with running animal. Less so with warm, even less so with furry

[lipamanka]

any problems with saying something like animal that runs instead of running animal?

[AcipenserSturio]

This is getting a bit syntactically complex, people are going to struggle translating that with the right vibes

[lipamanka]

what if we remove the running bit? hm. but furry animal, warm animal these are both things that apply to waso. the only real difference I can think of between soweli and waso is that when soweli want to move fast, they use their legs, and when waso want to move fast, they use their wings.

hmm wait what about like monkeys? they use their arms to move fast by swinging, right? or no?

IDK I think the animal words best have their nuances described through other methods so I think we should scrap that idea of mine. new idea: keep what we had, but try to use more examples to illustrate non-englishy edge cases. I think "beast" is good here, but "animal" and "land mammal" are not good. So like. what else?

[KelseyHigham]

i like beast and furry animal. i wrote "fuzzy creature, doggy" for my definition earlier.

i think "land" is helpful, just not mammal.

how's this? fuzzy creature, land animal, beast

[RetSamys]

I don't know if "warm" is a good indicator. If it turned out that polar bears are actually frosty inside, it wouldn't change me from saying polar bears are soweli.

I do like fuzzy creature, land animal, beast - but I'm always thinking of naked mole rats, elephants, Sphynx cats, and some other creatures lacking in fur. I think this list of words would be enough to give the idea that they would belong in soweli, though.

(Hippos and rhinos should technically be in that list of furless mammals, but I could see a case for them being akesi.)

Movement is mostly a nice indicator to me, but I've never seen any description of landmammal-ish movement that I liked. It'd be... abstract.

[KelseyHigham]

i personally think it's good to let people decide for themselves whether hippos and rhinos are soweli, and i think the same applies to naked mole rats, elephants, and sphynx cats

but yeah i think this definition is vague enough not to prescribe too hard

[lipamanka]

Okay so some notes i think it's fine to include "warm" and "furry" even if you can think of the edge case of a polar bear that's frozen inside. the fur is part of what keeps them warm. i can see someone using akesi for a sphinx cat, and i think it's good for our definition to show that without one of the core qualities of soweli there might be some gray area.

but for me maybe this is just individual disagreement but warmth is a pretty important part of soweli. if the freezy polar bear didn't have fur it wouldn't be a soweli. the fur and the warmth go hand in hand, because that is often the function of fur. because if that we might consider furry warm land animal

[KelseyHigham]

my sister's dog was like basically room temperature when i touched him really cold nose

[lipamanka]

for whatever reason i can't really imagine that. but also what is room temperature right now, in the 90s F? pretty warm ... and i think having a cold nose can also be a soweli thing right?

[KelseyHigham]

i forget what season it was when i last saw him. scientifically he was probably warmer than room temperature. i just wouldn't describe him as warm the way i describe some humans as warm.

cold nose maybe! i haven't touched a lot of soweli noses

[lipamanka]

okay well humans are also warm like soweli! i think warm doesn't mean "warmer than humans" it just means "warmer than an akesi probably" right? akesi are cold to the touch.

[gregdan3]

here's a collection of words/phrases that vaguely capture soweli in my head, which overlap some with the discussion so far. i've grouped them based on the relationship they have in my head. they are not necessarily exclusive to soweli, nor applicable to all soweli, but i would say that a creature of any type with a majority of these is very soweli.

• run, scurry, scamper, gallop
• warm, fuzzy, furry, soft
• parenting, feeding, protective, family
• four legs, two legs and two arms, tail
• land, grass, trees, dirt, hunting, foraging
• flee, hide, fight

i have intentionally avoided the word mammal here but it is strongly correlated to all of these nonetheless

is this useful?

[gregdan3]

the trouble is, this vague collection of feelings doesn't really lend itself to an accessible definition of soweli, or even one that is practical to read on Linku. i wouldn't know how to convert this to a definition at all.

"fuzzy creature, land animal, beast" captures it closest but of those three, i think "land animal (also see akesi)" is the most accurate

the different definitions of the critter words pull potential meanings away from one another, in a sense. a bat is a waso to many speakers because the ability to fly is so strongly correlated with waso. using soweli wouldn't be wrong, but it wouldn't be a speaker's first choice either. soweli and akesi make this distinction very strongly: anything that is more soweli is also less akesi, and vice versa.

[lipamanka]

i think the four limbs thing is holding soweli back here. ostriches are soweli and they only have two legs. i think i recall that out of a bunch of toki ponists surveyed, all of the ones who've actually seen an ostrich said they'd call it a soweli. i think if we can choose a maximum of seven of these, ideally like six, and included them in a soweli definition, it could work well.

[lipamanka]

"fuzzy creature, land animal, beast" captures it closest but of those three, i think "land animal (also see akesi)" is the most accurate

alright but i really like "fuzzy creature, land animal, beast." we already have a "see also" section in linku, don't we?

[AcipenserSturio]

@gregdan3 @lipamanka are you certain on "fuzzy" over "furry"? I feel like in translations this distinction will get lost anyway, and fuzzy is just a less commonly used word

otherwise i support fuzzy creature, land animal, beast

[lipamanka]

fuzzy vibes better, plus people don't think of feathers as fur, but they are fluffy. fluffy ends up being more liberal here and let's soweli mean more things within its usage. but i'm still open to furry. fluffy might be better.

[RetSamys]

For me it'd be fuzzy>furry>fluffy probably

[lipamanka]

i would like to make sure to represent edge cases like ostriches that fit into soweli but don't match up with european language's taxonomies.

[KelseyHigham]

i think i recall that out of a bunch of toki ponists surveyed, all of the ones who've actually seen an ostrich said they'd call it a soweli.

it was a little over half

[lipamanka]

hm i guess i misremembered. still i think that's significant

[RetSamys]

I disagree on Ostriches being clearly a soweli. And I don't want edge cases to be overrepresented for the sake of pedagogy while other edge cases get more of a question mark. In that case, I'd rather want all edge cases covered (reasonably)

[KelseyHigham]

ostrich la: if we include examples, then i'd like to include a non-mammal example if there's one that's not contentious. but i'm not aware of one that's not contentious

[gregdan3]

the ostrich thing feels like over-correction again, imo (i looked back at this wording and thought it was mean but i do not know how to make it less mean. it is not meant to be mean, just an observation).

a proper definition should capture soweli as it is used, and given ostrich is at best 50% soweli 50% waso by that poll, i don't see why a definition we propose would or should change that

hell, part of the fun is that we have these subtle differences in how we communicate and still make it work :P i don't see it being necessary to include ostrich or something that is specific to the ostrich in the defintion

@gregdan3 @lipamanka are you certain on "fuzzy" over "furry"? I feel like in translations this distinction will get lost anyway, and fuzzy is just a less commonly used word

otherwise i support fuzzy creature, land animal, beast

hmm, the point about commonness is good, but i still feel like fuzzy captures more soweli than either furry or fluffy (proposed elsewhere), and remains accurate like, sure, in english i probably wouldn't call a dog fuzzy, but it isn't wrong either. does anything stop us from using both though?

fuzzy creature, furry creature, land animal, beast

hmm, verbose+redundant

bottom line is i'm not strongly attached to fuzzy over furry but i think it is still more apt than furry

[lipamanka]

i don't see it being necessary to include ostrich or something that is specific to the ostrich in the defintion

lol this is why i didn't want to bring it up here, i thought it was off topic and i never wanted to include it in the definition lmao.

the example of an ostrich is not relevant to this project.

bottom line is i'm not strongly attached to fuzzy over furry but i think it is still more apt than furry

this is how i feel about it too.

[KelseyHigham]

soweli

sona pu

NOUN animal, beast, land mammal

sona Linku pi toki Inli

animal, beast, land mammal

sona Linku pi toki pona

jan en akesi en waso en kala en pipi li sama soweli li ken soweli; soweli mute li ken tawa li ken moku li ken unpa li ken pilin li ken moli

sona ku

animal⁵, deer⁵, creature⁴, dog⁴, cat⁴, llama³, goat³, Musteloidea³, beast³, lion³, pig², capybara², wolf², horse², mouse (2020)², tiger², large domesticated animal², Hominidae², procyonid², monkey², rabbit²

sona sin

fuzzy creature, land animal, beast

[Daenyth]

fuzzy creature, land animal, beast

👍

[Th3Scribble]

"fuzzy" feels wrong to me but otherwise this is good

[gregdan3]

I mean, the alternatives are like

hairy creature

furry creature

I described my vibe on furry before

And on hairy, it feels discomforting as a definition lmao

[mazziechai]

I'm moving this word into a final comment period. Please review the attached PR #12. On 19 Aug at 00:00 UTC, the PR will be merged into main.