From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Wed Feb 5 14:34:36 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Wed, 5 Feb 92 14:34 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA28014; Wed, 5 Feb 92 14:25:01 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA15853; Wed, 5 Feb 92 13:25:45 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA08176; Wed, 5 Feb 92 13:24:48 EST Message-Id: <9202051824.AA08176@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 2398; Wed, 05 Feb 92 13:23:01 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 3985; Wed, 05 Feb 92 13:21:59 EST Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1992 18:59:25 +0100 Reply-To: Edmund Grimley-Evans Sender: Lojban list From: Edmund Grimley-Evans Subject: states/provinces/counties X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO Bruce's heuristic, that if other languages translate a proper name, so should Lojban, seems to me very sound. I often use the same heuristic for translating proper names into Esperanto. In German New York is traditionally called "Neu-York", in Esperanto "Nov-jorko",... I shouldn't waste much time inventing Lojban-names for the British counties. Many of the English names are completely unknown even to the people who live in them! And many of them have no long tradition. Very few British counties have their own names in Esperanto, and only one of them has a name in French. (I'm not going to tell you which, guess!) It would be much more useful (at least in the case of Britain) merely to work with the names of the largest cities. Edmund