From cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Sat Feb 8 02:26:23 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Sat, 8 Feb 92 02:26 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA14012; Fri, 7 Feb 92 20:35:48 EST Received: from rutgers.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA22881; Fri, 7 Feb 92 19:57:47 -0500 Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) with UUCP id AA08883; Fri, 7 Feb 92 19:08:23 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA01632; Fri, 7 Feb 92 18:05:46 EST Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (via uunet.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA27653; Fri, 7 Feb 92 15:31:00 -0500 Message-Id: <9202072031.AA27653@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 6193; Fri, 07 Feb 92 14:54:20 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 5776; Fri, 07 Feb 92 14:53:44 EST Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1992 19:50:13 GMT Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: states/provinces/counties To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson"'s message of Fri, 7 Feb 1992 09:44:17 EST <18334.9202071602@cogsci.ed.ac.uk Status: RO > From: "Mark E. Shoulson" > >From: Ivan A Derzhanski > > >Or {la .iu.es.}, which is also readily understood. I had forgotten that pauses mustn't occur in mid-cmene. Suppose all my full stops are replaced by commas. So that was {la .iu,es.} > Wouldn't something based on the Lojban names > for the letters (.ubu sy.) be better? No, because Lojban letter names are for Lojban letters. The name "US" (commonly used to denote a certain country in the major language of her population) consists of two English letters. I don't know of any Lojban names of any non-Lojban letters. (This last term may mean: (1) letters of a script such as Cyrillic, kana, or devanagari; (2) Roman letters not used in Lojban ("h", "q", "w"); (3) Roman letters when pertaining to a language other than Lojban (since we're pretending that it is by chance that we use Roman letters for writing Lojban).) > Why use English pronunciations for the letters? Because the natives use them. {la .iu,es.} is a valid cmene and it is close to the original pronounciation. > Also note that around these parts, the > pronunciation {nu} is about as common as {niu}, if not more so. Point taken. (Yet in Russian and Bulgarian we use the {niu}-variant.) > >You have my emphatic vote against translating names or parts of names. > > I think I agree here. Good, now that you agreed with me, I'm going to argue against myself. I just told everyone that in Bulgarian the "new" in NY is left as it is. But we say (lit.) `coast of elephant bone' for Cote d'Ivoire. In Russian this latter is called {kot. divuar.}, but even there the names of the Central and the South African Republics are translated. What will happen to the Cape of Good Hope? To the North and South Pole (what do their local populations call them? :-)) To the Sea of Tranquility and the rest of the Moon's surface? We will have to translate a certain number of names. So where is the boundary? Ivan