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To: Lojban List <lojban@egroups.com>
Subject: Re: [lojban] tcadu cmene
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 15:38:56 -0400
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From: Pierre Abbat <phma@oltronics.net>
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On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Elrond wrote:
>Hi,
>	The Thai culture has its own language and writing implement, with
>a quite not negligible set of sounds and phonemes that seem allophonic for
>westerners but are not for Thai people.
>Therefore, while some cities like Bangkok have a thai name quite easily
>transcriptible into lojban ([xruntep] is the thai name, meaning "city of
>angels", for Bangkok), several are quite problematic; in particular,
>several different cities/places have similar names that are completely
>allophonic in lojban. for example:
>    Bang Na
>    Phang Nga
>    Pang Ga 
>(the Nga being I.P.A. [Na], with N being a velar nasal)
>
>The problem here is that both "Nga" is as much as close to "n" as it is to
>"g", and "Ph" is very much like "B". What should be the appropriate
>transcriptions ?
>
>More generally, in the case of such similarities, what is the regular
>workline to follow in order to build the most accurate transcriptions ?

I would start thinking about diacritics; for instance, put an y'y above the p
for Ph and mark the n when it sounds like ng in some way. Then there are the
tones, which are just as important in a tonal language as the bet/pet/phet
distinctions.

bau da de poi lerfu poi krasi lo slaka cu drata de poi fanmu lo slaka vau le
sance .i mu'a bau la mon poi du la'o my. hmoob .my li by poi krasi lo slaka cu
zunsna .ije li by poi fanmu lo slaka cu tonga

co'o mi'e pier.