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Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 02:41:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alexander Kozhevnikov <alexkoz@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Question about Lojbanized Name in Unix/Linux
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ki'e (that means thanks if I'm not forgetting/mistaking things) for the=20
very informative replies to .xorxes. .uuZIT. Pierre and Gleki.

My replies to all of you follow, organized loosely by topic (so=20
quotes are out-of-order from your own messages):

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, Jorge Llamb=C3=ADas wrote:
> The language doesn't actually officially prescribe where syllable
> boundaries are (although it does have some rules about what counts as a
> syllable, because syllable count is significant in some cases. The commas
> are always optional, and they indicate the writer's preferred syllabie
> separations.
>=20
> [snip]
>=20
> They are not different words in Lojban, just (very slightly) different
> permitted pronunciations of the same word. Even the stress in cmevla
> doesn't change the word, so "aleks=C3=A1ndr" and "al=C3=A9ksandr" and "=
=C3=A1leksandr" are
> all valid pronounciations of the same word. Stress is only important in
> brivla.

[and]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Commas are ignored when determining whether two words are the same and wh=
ere
> the default stress is (valfendi gets it wrong on "spatrxapi,o", but that'=
s
> what I thought it was when I wrote it). You can leave them out.

Alright, that's good to know. I guess ".aleksandr.kojevnikov." is plenty=20
good for my purposes then, since apparently it's considered acceptably=20
identical regardless of where the stress or syllable breaks go.

More and more these discussions reveal to me that my understanding of what=
=20
a "stress" on a syllable means is flawed/limited - it was based on what my=
=20
parents/school taught me with regard to Russian (in America on the other=20
hand I've virtually never had syllable stress/emphasis come up in=20
discussion of how to pronounce things: closest thing that comes to mind=20
is a quote from some sitcom where one character says "you're putting=20
the emphAsis on the wrong syllAble", and to clarify, besides=20
stress/emphasis, they also made those 'A's like lojban's 'a' sound, not=20
like their typical pronunciation, which in my mind is more like a lojban=20
'y' typically.)

So to give some context: My understanding, and I very very tentatively=20
want to say most Russians' understanding, is that there is no real=20
distinction between emphasis and stress on a syllable (I think this is=20
still correct?), but also that there is and can ever be only one syllable=
=20
per word that is stressed (this latter part I was taught early enough that=
=20
somehow, despite it not being logically sound now that I think about it,=20
I can't for the life of me recall rejecting it ever since). Because of=20
this, I have ONLY my Russian childhood based understanding of syllable=20
stress to guide me.

Okay, so worse still, as you bring up, in Russian the 'a' and 'o' vowels=20
are collapsed (is that a/the technical term for this?) into what sounds=20
like the lojban 'y' when not stressed. So my understanding of what it even=
=20
means to stress a syllable was at least partly conflated with actually=20
changing the phoneme until recently as well.

I just realized this is more or at least as relevant to the=20
effect-of-learning-lojban-if-your-native-tongue-is-something-else thread.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, Jorge Llamb=C3=ADas wrote:
> BTW, a.lek,san,dr and ko,jev,ni,kov are the default syllables with the
> camxes morphology, so in your case you are not even showing a non-standar=
d
> syllable break.

[and]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, 'Wuzzy' via lojban wrote:
> Another workaround would be to simply drop the commas altogether, but
> then you would have to live with a slightly different syllabation.

Can you two help me resolve/reconsile these two statements? Seems like=20
.xorxes. is saying the default syllabation is equivalent to mine, but=20
.uuZIT. is saying dropping the commas would make it slightly different.=20
I'm guessing the answer lies in me understanding the meaning of "camxes=20
morphology" and if that means it's different vs. some alternative=20
morphology or something?

Did you mean for that to be written "a.lek,san,dr", or am I correctly=20
guessing that that was a typo and you meant "a,lek,san,dr"?

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, Jorge Llamb=C3=ADas wrote:
> The glottal stop/pause around cmevla (not around names in general, just
> around cmevla) is always required. The peiod to represent it in writing i=
s
> optional, since as long as you write spaces around the name it can always
> be inferred.

I see. I had not realized (or maybe just forgot) that leaving the period=20
off was optional. I had gotten into the habit of thinking of the spaces as=
=20
optional and the periods as not, since that to me maps more cleanly to the=
=20
actual sound stream, but that makes sense: in writing either one is=20
acceptable there. Thank you for clarifying.

Sidenote: now that you mention this though, and I've had time to=20
understand it and think about it, I would like to tentatively voice my=20
opinion in favor of always putting the periods in. Such implicit rules are=
=20
easy for machines to account for on the fly, but if I envision a society=20
with Lojban as the primary language, I can easily see it quickly devolving=
=20
into people forgetting the glotal stops when reading text and learning the=
=20
language being slower/harder (and more likely to result in someone=20
learning something wrong) if text is typically written with glotal stops=20
not signalled by periods in places where they are mandatory.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, Jorge Llamb=C3=ADas wrote:
> mu'o mi'e xorxes

Another question: Isn't the whole point of "mu'o" to indicate that the=20
statement/message is over, therefore doesn't having words after it go=20
against its intended purpose, strictly speaking? In a written medium like=
=20
this it obviously doesn't matter (at least assuming I 'understand' email=20
and also have some notion of the typical stuff email replies and mailing=20
lists end up leaving in the email body), but if we were talking in real=20
time I would hope that I could treat "mu'o" as a cue that I could start=20
talking and not overlap your statements. Thoughts?

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, 'Wuzzy' via lojban wrote:
>> .a,lekSANdr.koJEVni,kov.
> =E2=80=9C.a,lekSANdr.=E2=80=9D can be also written as =E2=80=9C.a,leksand=
r.=E2=80=9D. By default, the
> stress is on the syllable before the last one, in this case, =E2=80=9Csan=
=E2=80=9D. If
> your word uses the default pronounciation, you do not have to
> capitalize it. Having the stress on that syllable is also preferred.

*Nod* I was aware about that second-from-last rule. It makes more sense=20
why I chose to capitalize it anyway in context of my initial=20
goals+ignorance: I knew that by making the stress explicit I would=20
unambiguously represent the syllable breaks, and since I wasn't sure what=
=20
if any default syllable breaks there were at the time, my choices were=20
either ".a,lek,san,dr.' or '.a,lekSANdr.', and of the two I liked the=20
latter because it provided more information explicitly which is already a=
=20
plus, and in less space (I mean in ASCII and UTF8 encodings, which are the=
=20
only encodings I respect enough to consider, though I guess in most=20
fonts/handwritings too).

Given the replies by .xorxes. though, I am leaning more towards just=20
".aleksandr.kojevnikov." and moving on with it (I am unsure yet how I feel=
=20
about this business of lojban effectively considering cmevla as identical=
=20
regardless of stress or syllable break, in particular as to whether or not=
=20
this makes me want to just omit syllable break/stress cues from my=20
lojbanized name entirely, or if I want to stick with making them=20
explicit.) Could you elaborate on this:

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, 'Wuzzy' via lojban wrote:
> Lojbanization of names does not have to be perfect, also, it is
> preferred to Lojbanize names with default pronounciation.

Why is default pronounciation preferred?

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, 'Wuzzy' via lojban wrote:
> This just sucks.
> It seems the GECOS field is culturally biased and it looks a lot of
> this is only there to carry along legacy stuff.
> Many manpages talk about a =E2=80=9Cfull name=E2=80=9D=E2=80=94This impli=
es that everyone has a
> so-called =E2=80=9Cfull name=E2=80=9D, whatever that means.

My thoughts exactly. I think as a vague notion "full name" isn't too bad,=
=20
when you consider that this is in contrast to a username, so unless your=20
username IS your name (in whatever form you'd consider full/real), it's=20
probably somewhat meaningful (just poorly named). I'm not sure the rest of=
=20
those subfields are even used all that much ever since computers became=20
personal and not mainframes.

I'm almost tempted to start advocating in the Linux/Unix community at=20
large for an extension to GECOS which would allow for, at the bare=20
minimum, escape sequences. Maybe using some magic byte as the first=20
character in the GECOS field to signal that it's following the new=20
extension format (for backwords compatibility since we all, I presume,=20
know how much computer-related stuff worships backwards compatibility).=20
Rinse and repeat for the passwd-style files if they don't support escaping=
=20
colons (since that's what separates the fields in those files). But sadly=
=20
I don't know when I'd find the time to make that happen.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, 'Wuzzy' via lojban wrote:
> I know this is stupid but that way you have at least no alien
> characters.
>=20
> I do not know any estabilshed alternative characters for the comma.
> Lojban has a very small alphabet and the semicolon is indeed not used.

Well, for my usecase I can now sleep soundly at night without the commas,=
=20
and thus without the semicolons, on my Debian Linux install. Still, it=20
would be nice if we had an accepted alternative to commas for those corner=
=20
cases where a comma or comma-like characters are unavailable (e.g.=20
whatever unicode provides that might look like a comma... The single=20
bottom opening quote thing for instance ( =E2=80=9A <-- might get screwed u=
p=20
somewhere along the line from me entering it and you all reading it, or=20
show up indistinguishable from a comma in some (many?) fonts). More=20
usecases should provide sufficient support for such characters, but if=20
you're stuck with ANSII compatability only...)

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Saturday, September 20, 2014 18:05:40 Alexander Kozhevnikov wrote:
> What's your dialect of Russian? The standard one collapses =D0=BE and =D0=
=B0 in
> unstressed syllables and devoices final consonants like =D0=B2->=D1=84. B=
ut I suppose
> that Russians, at least literate ones, think of them as =D0=BE even if pr=
onounced
> as =D0=B0 (la'a lo labru'o cu toltugni).

Yes, I think some or even most of us don't actually realize either of=20
these phoneme transformations happen. We also effectively claim "=D0=B6=D0=
=B8" is=20
really pronounced "=D0=B6=D1=8B", ditto for "=D1=88=D0=B8"->"=D1=88=D1=8B" =
(sidenote, this is so=20
ingrained I had to retrain myself for the lojban "ji" and "ci"=20
combinations to pronounce them with an actual "i" sound), but those are=20
really heavily asserted in early teaching, so I ended up picking it up=20
consciously. I only noticed the =D0=B2->=D1=84 thing when I was already in =
America=20
and working to maintain/further my Russian: I kept writing things ending=20
with =D1=84 because that's what they sounded like, then getting corrected t=
hat=20
it's actually =D0=B2. I wonder if Russians who spent more time immersed in =
just=20
Russian end up not noting the latter, or perhaps even not noticing the=20
former. But to answer your question, I know a phonetically-faithful=20
reproduction is "kojevnikyv", but see Gleki's reply to your statement and=
=20
my additional reply after it:

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> And although this might sound strange it preserves the visual form of the
> name.

Yes, this was a conscious choice. In fact, I didn't even consciously=20
realize we did this (transform/collapse 'a' and 'o' to 'y' (still using=20
lojban characters and their corresponding phonemes... I should map the IPA=
=20
symbols to my keyboard sometime) when they're not stressed), until my=20
partner had this told to her by her Russian teacher. Ever since I became=20
cognizant of it, I've been annoyed by it, and so I thought about it and=20
decided that my name was given to me with an 'o' in the last syllable, and=
=20
by god it will sound like an 'o', Russian proper pronunciation be damned.=
=20
Of course, it's a bit arbitrary, arguably it was given to me in it's=20
pronounced form, plus given names are inately arbitrary and a=20
self-determined one is more 'true' in my book anyway, but granting for a=20
second that I give my given name the privilege of being treated as my real=
=20
name, the idea is that I think most Russians consciously perceive/think it=
=20
as written, not as it is pronounced, which grants the written version more=
=20
legitimacy.

.ui ki'e Thank you all again,
mi'e .aleksandr.kojevnikov. mu'o

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