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?
The Complete Lojban Language says:
The final arbiter of the correct form of a name is the person doing the naming, although most cultures grant people the right to determine how they want their own name to be spelled and pronounced.
Because Moscow was named by the Russians, the best Lojbanization would be based on the Russian pronunciation of the name - thus probably "la mozgvas" or "la moskfas" would be desireable, but lose visual recognition. "la moskuas" seems like a reasonable compromise. The name of the country clearly should be "la rosi,as" (which is pronounced as you have written rosIas).
Similarly we Lojbanize Deutschland, and not Germany as the name of that country, and the country in the Caucausus should be something like "la sakartfelos" (Sakartvelo) rather that "la georgias".
lojbab