[lojban-beginners] Re: towns and countries

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Saturday 05 January 2008 05:00, Мария Карманова wrote:
> Hello!
>
> My name is Mari, I study lojban since December. But English is my third
> language after Russian and German, so I have a question: when I lojbanize a
> name of a country or a town, what pronounsation schould i use as base? For
> example, Moscow can be la moskou., but when I translate from Russian it can
> be la moskwAs. And Russia: la racas. or la rosIas?

For Moscow, I say {la moskov}. Russia could be {lo rukygu'e}, {la rukygug}, or 
{la ruk}. Belarus is {la blabruk}, from {blabi rusko}; the initial "b" is 
retained because a cmevla cannot begin with "la". Germany has generally been 
called {la daitclant} (it can't begin with "doi" either), but I suggest {la 
dotclant} because the gismu is {dotco}.

{moskou} is a fu'ivla {mosKO,u} ("ou" is not a diphthong in Lojban) and 
{moskwAs} is invalid because "w" is not used in Lojban.

Pierre