Tuesday, November 15, 2011

camel absences & absent camels


Borges memorably mused on a slightly unfounded assertion by Gibbon concerning the absence of camels in the Quran. Lojban has the word KUMTE which also covers llamas & alpacas. Curiously, the Lojban word for 'empty' is almost the same--KUNTI. So a 'camel-empty book' would be KUMTE KUNTI CUKTA. Meanwhile another blogger suggests that "the presence of camels in the Qu'ran demonstrates its inauthenticity" but finds the sentence in question by Gibbon who, it turns out, said no such thing.