From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Wed Mar 11 20:41:37 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Wed, 11 Mar 92 20:41 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA01682; Wed, 11 Mar 92 18:10:30 EST Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA16044; Wed, 11 Mar 92 17:17:53 -0500 Message-Id: <9203112217.AA16044@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3172; Wed, 11 Mar 92 17:17:09 EST Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 PTF011) id 4282; Wed, 11 Mar 92 17:16:51 EST Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1992 19:23:00 GMT Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!cix.compulink.co.uk!jbdp Sender: Lojban list From: Julian Pardoe Subject: Lojban Names. X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO Ivan got in first with most of my nitpicks, but I still have a few things to say. (I'm quoting from both him and nitcion, but I haven't had time to spearate out the different quotations.) I agree that Ivan that the whole exercise was rather silly and that if it's going to be done it needs to be on a regular basis with more-or-less fixed mappings from IPA symbols to Lojban sounds. (Absolutely fixed mappings might not be optimal. We might conceivably map [y] to {i} (many languages do). However, if language X has no [u] it would be better in some ways to map [y] to {u}.) However, I have grave doubts about the feasibility of following a strictly phonetic "call it what the natives call it" approach, on both practical and theoretical grounds. I'd prefer a "let the natives decide what to call it" approach. Imposing a (from the point of language X) arbitrary distortion of the phonemes in a name might to X-speakers seem just as high-handed as imposing a name in a dead language. Of course, in some cases there will be no agreed preference amongst the natives. In that case, as with personal names, it's a question of respecting the wishes of the person you're talking to -- but more difficult since you could be dealing with more than one at a time. > By the way, the country's name is _Shqipe"ri_ (stressed on the final > syllable), so your lojbanisation is wrong thrice: (1) the final {a} is bogus I'm not sure about that. Albanians often seem to add the defimite article (-a in this case) to names. I've seen both 'Prishtin"e' and 'Prishtina'. My friend Lutfi (definite article -i) could not make me see what the difference was. So {ctiipyri,a} might be OK. > _Albania_ is not the Albanian name for Albania. It shouldn't be used. I'm not sure about this. What the natives want to call it in Lojban might not be the same as what they call it in their own language. Many Esperantists have toyed with "suomo/Suomio" instead of the rather clumsy and ambiguous "finno/Finnlando" that most people use, but I have not yet met a Finn who didn't prefer "finno". I expect many Swiss would opt for {xelveti,a} rather than {cvaits}, {suis} or whatever. I wouldn't be suprised if many Albanians didn't prefer {.alBAni,a} to {ctiipyri,a} (and of course before Gheg became the basis for official language rather than Tosk (or vice versa) the country was called {ctiipni,a}). > But definitively {london} over {lndn} (actually, this'd make a really good > debate; I seem to remember Colin (or was it And?) already being on the side > on {london}. > I'm on the side of {lndn}. I'm not a native, but I know it for a fact > that the natives don't call it "Lawn Dawn". I'm more a less a native and I certainly don't call it {lndn}. The closest is probably {landn}, but it's not the way I pronounce it: my Lojban {a} is too long and broad(?). It sounds better than "{lyndn}" and strikes my ear as almost a plausible native pronounciation (at least where the native is from "Sarf Lunn'n".) I'm quite satisifed with the Esperanto "Londono", but it doesn't sound so good in Lojban -- I think the non-English stress of the Esperanto stops its striking me a just a mispronounced "London". A Dutch-like {londyn}/{londn} or a Czech/Polish-style {londin} strike me as best from the sound point of view. I'd accept {london} though, because that fits in with the way I think names should be done. > beljik - belji (what's the Flemish form again?) *or* > belgik - belgia: la brusel > No "*or*". The Flemish _Belgije"_ is somewhere between {bElgi,ie} and > {bEl,ii,ie}. Yes, no "or". As far as I know (based on listening to Belgian radio stations) Belgi"e is most like {belxi,y}, except that "g" is usually voiced in Flemish. (I believe it's unvoiced in some of the dialects spoken in the Netherlands.) > slovenias: la liublianas (someone say la laibax? :) > makedoni,a slovenia makedoni,ia sloVEni,ia > bosnia - bosnian: la sara,evos. Why {bosnian} and not {bosnias}? It seems an arbitrary departure from the pattern. In any case it should be {bosna}, {sara,ievo}. What have you got against [j]? You seem to leave it out all over the place. Does Lojban have rules about vowels in adjacent syllables that I don't know about? The distinction between {i,a} and {i,ia} may be slight to you but it does exist. The distinction between {ae} and {a,ie} is certainly significant. On another topic, is the {,} in {sara,evos} necessary. {ae} is not a valid Lojban syllable, so it can only be read as {a,e}. I've always worked on the basis that in the absence of {,}s adjacent vowel- letters should be merged from left to right into the longest possible syllable. When adding a letter produces an invalid syllable, then an unmarked syllable break must have occurred. If "/" shows the progress of the parse and commas separate identified syllables: e.g. from {/ae}: {a/e} -> ok; {ae/} -> invalid, insert break; {a,e/} ... e.g. from {/aii}: {a/ii} -> ok; {ai/i} -> ok; {aii/} -> invalid, insert break; {ai,i/} ... Is this the way to do it? This leads me to ask: {.ukrai,ina}, {.ukra,ina}, {.ukrai,iina} or {.ukra,iina}? > What on earth is {laibax}? It is not even a cmene (you can't have {la} > inside, except after a consonant, right?) Isn't that the syllable {la} not the sequence of letters? {lai} should be OK: it can't be interpreted as {la,i} and so there's no danger of hearing the word {la}. > xajistan - xajistana: la .erevan > {xa,iistAn}. It looked like {xaiastan} in my copy of "Sovetakan Hajastan". {.ierevan}! Another missing [j]. (As far as I know, it's not just a product of Russian transliteration. Which leads me to ask: Why on earth do the French write "Eltsine" and then *say* it that way too!) > rumania - rumanias: > Nonsense. It is _Roma^nia_, where _a^_ is the back counterpart of > {i} alias the unrounded counterpart of {u}. Make it {y}. I believe the "o" is somewhat bogus, unstressed "o" having become "u" (and being spelt as such) in Romanian. The orthographic "o" is a political/cult- ural point and a good example of where following the pronunciation may not be what the natives want! The last part of the word is -{NI,ia}. I guess {y} is the best mapping for "^a" but Romanian does have a {y}: a-breve. > rusko - la moskvas. (Please, god, not mozgvas or moskfas!), Well, if {moskfas} is what the system gives you {moskfas} is what you get -- whether it please God or not. You escape in this case but I don't suppose {myskvA} makes you feel any better. It's not going to be very recognizable to someone who doesn't speak Russian though. How the hell is someone who's never heard of Novosibirsk going to look up {nyvysibIrsk} in his atlas -- even his Russian-language atlas? I really can't see a strict pronunciation-preserving approach working in practice. "Let the natives decide" won't work in all cases, but in most of the really hard cases (e.g. border rivers) pronunciation-preservation will have exactly the same problems. In fact, if names in dead languages are allowed "let the natives decide" may often work where pronunciation-preserv- ation fails. Over time, conventional names will probably become accepted in some of the difficult cases. Let's hope this process is well advanced by the time the UN decides to issue its first official documents in Lojban :-) On a totally different topic, could someone please explain what "cleft places" are. By not understanding this term, I seem to be missing out on some interesting discussions. I found the discussion of the phone game very interesting, even though the discussion wasn't really full enough for me to understand all the issues. (At the moment, I have almost no materials.) I found the phone game of more benefit that longer translations of texts. I'd like to see more "translate this into English" challenges to! -- la djuliyn.