From sklyanin@pdmi.ras.ru Tue May 02 09:51:24 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19919 invoked from network); 2 May 2000 16:51:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 2 May 2000 16:51:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO qh.egroups.com) (10.1.2.28) by mta2 with SMTP; 2 May 2000 16:51:24 -0000 Received: (qmail 11353 invoked from network); 2 May 2000 16:51:23 -0000 Received: from imv.egroups.com (HELO mv.egroups.com) (10.1.1.41) by iqh.egroups.com with SMTP; 2 May 2000 16:51:23 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sklyanin@pdmi.ras.ru Received: from [10.1.10.102] by mv.egroups.com with NNFMP; 02 May 2000 17:51:22 -0000 Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 16:51:12 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: French word for "Lojban" Message-ID: <8en120+ch7@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Length: 1801 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster From: "Evgueni Sklyanin" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 2497 --- In lojban@egroups.com, Elrond wrote: > > Hi, > I am french and thus french-speaker, and I need some crucial > information on this particular point: what is the gender of the word > "Lojban" in french ? > > I mean, even if "Lojban" taken as a name for LLG's work is > genderless, we french people use languages names with genders, and we > almost always use the male gender (as in /le fran=E7ais/, /l'anglais est > int=E9ressant/, /le chinois/, etc.). Unfortunately, "Logical Language", of > which "Lojban" is a contraction, translates to /la langue logique/, > /langue/ being the french word for "language" or "tongue". > I have personally used "Lojban" as a 'male' word for the moment, > thinking that afterall /Langage Logique/ (/langage/ is 'male' in french) > is also a valid translation for /Logical Language/; indeed, we rather say > /langage formel/ to express "formal language". > But I might be wrong. And there is perhaps already a proper > official gender. As unfortunately I down't know of any lojban-aware french > people, could you please enlighten me ? > > Thanks in advance > raph > > In Russian, which also has genders, the word {yazyk} for "language" is masculine. By a very fortunate coincidence, the word "Lojban" matches the same masculine gender pattern (ending with consonant) which allows it to be declined easily, as a native Russian word. On the other hand, with "Esperanto", which follows the pattern of the neutral gender (ending with -o), we have a conflict of genders with {yazyk}. The conflict is resolved by assigning to "Esperanto" the same masculine gender as for "language" but the price for that is that the word "Esperanto" loses the capability to decline, which is sometimes rather inconvenient. Evgueni Sklyanin