From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Jan 24 11:53:46 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:53:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LQoZe-0001Z0-K4 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:53:46 -0800 Received: from smtpauth03.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net ([64.202.165.183]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LQoZb-0001Yk-Ba for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:53:46 -0800 Received: (qmail 10775 invoked from network); 24 Jan 2009 19:53:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (76.237.189.74) by smtpauth03.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net (64.202.165.183) with ESMTP; 24 Jan 2009 19:53:36 -0000 Message-ID: <497B731F.1060000@lojbo.org> Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:59:27 -0600 From: sen User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: How to say "Hmong"? References: <200901172220.12680.phma@phma.optus.nu> In-Reply-To: <200901172220.12680.phma@phma.optus.nu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 15243 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: sen@lojbo.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Pierre Abbat wrote: > The Hmong language has two dialects in America (I don't know about dialects in > Asia), Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) and Moob Leeg (Green Mong). The name could be > Lojbanized as "xmon", but that might be disliked by the Moob Leeg, who don't > have the "hm" sound. It could be "mon", but there's another language called > Mon, in the Mon-Khmer family. So what is the Lojban word for Hmong? > > Pierre > > > Pierre, I'm sure you agree that we should make a point of look at the actual pronunciation of a foreign name by the locals, rather than its conventional English spelling or pronunciation. In the case of "Hmong", these seem to be reasonably close. Wikipedia give the Hmong word for Hmong as [mɔ̃ŋ], with the [m] either voiced or devoiced according to dialect, just as you indicate. However, I would tend to make voiceless [m] into "m" in Lojban, anyway, so I don't think there's a conflict as far as fu'ivla are concerned. "Mon", on the other hand, appears to be [mun] in Burmese or, more importantly, [man] in Mon. So, assuming that there are no other conflicts, I would make "Hmong" = {mon} and "Mon" = {man}. I suppose there will always tend to be a lot of conflicts, though, when it comes to these short cultural words, since there are so many of them. We might be inclined to add an additional morpheme from the source language as filler. For instance, the name of the main Chinese ethnic group, the 汉 Hàn, could become {xan} in Lojban, but it might had better be {xanjen} from 汉人 Hànrén (Han people) or {xanzus} from 汉族 Hànzú (Han ethnicity). -Nat To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.