Subject: Re: [lojban] Translating names

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:54:33 -0500

At 04:58 AM 03/22/2000 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:
>The final consonant and the pause are needed for segmentation purposes but
>are not otherwise significant. Nor, in Lojban, is the choice of final
>consonant; in Loglan, -s is required in borrowed or constructed names that
>would end in a vowel.

I don't recall him ever saying 's' was required, but it is one he used 
commonly. As you note, he also used 'n' a lot.

> I suspect that JCB used -s because, as suggested, it
>was familiar, but also because he took it to be a minimal addition (talking
>about {romas} for Rome, he notes how little the mere -s would bother a Roman,
>though he is contrasting it with the effect of dropping the last syllable.
>He makes a similar comment about {paRIS} for French). Lojban's preference
>for s probably is inherited. The preference for n probably is, too; it
>appeared in constructed names first where it was vaguely justified
>({loglentan, the last element from {takna}) then where it was not. It was
>also used to make names out of cmavo ({nen}, One). Again this is familiar
>and minimal (in some sense) and, I suspect, the symmetry of {nen}, the most
>common case, was appealing to JCB. Both of these rules or patterns might
>have been generalized in Lojban's more relaxed atmosphere.

There was one other conscious reason for MY using "n". This was also a 
conscious letter choice in a small number of gismu that were made wherein 
it did not matter what consonant was chosen in a given position; I later 
regretted this because of rafsi collisions. It is a syllable-ending 
consonant that is phonologically acceptable in many languages that prefer 
to avoid CVC syllables. It therefore probably sounds more pleasant to a 
speaker of such languages.

In addition, because of the mapping of Chinese phonemes it is also the most 
common syllable ending consonant in Lojban, with r and s and c also in 
there. Thus rafsi using n are common and names built to emulate lujvo or 
to chop a character off a gismu will tend to end in these letters (JCB's 
dog's name: "cimr"). I think that s and c occur so much in the language 
that I get sibilant-tired, and so I avoid using them in names. I don't 
know why I never end names with 'r'.

lojbab
----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)