Subject: tcadu cmene

From: Elrond <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 21:02:38 +0200 (CET)

Hi,
The Thai culture has its own language and writing implement, with
a quite not negligible set of sounds and phonemes that seem allophonic for
westerners but are not for Thai people.
Therefore, while some cities like Bangkok have a thai name quite easily
transcriptible into lojban ([xruntep] is the thai name, meaning "city of
angels", for Bangkok), several are quite problematic; in particular,
several different cities/places have similar names that are completely
allophonic in lojban. for example:
Bang Na
Phang Nga
Pang Ga 
(the Nga being I.P.A. [Na], with N being a velar nasal)

The problem here is that both "Nga" is as much as close to "n" as it is to
"g", and "Ph" is very much like "B". What should be the appropriate
transcriptions ?

More generally, in the case of such similarities, what is the regular
workline to follow in order to build the most accurate transcriptions ?

regards,
raph