Re: [lojban] Re: "la" rule

[Seth Gordon <sethg@ropine.com>]

Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> ONLY if a word is in cmene form is it illegal to have a "la".  Using a
> gismu or lujvo or a fu'ivla as a name  ("la latmo" for "Latin") has no
> restriction.
> 
> Indeed, I would imagine that native Lojbanists would indeed use brivla
> to name things, rather than Lojbanize foreign words.  That is indeed how
> several languages work.

The tutorial and reference material on Lojban that I've seen don't say a
lot about this option.  E.g., _lojban. bei loi co'a cilre_ suggests that
since "Mei Li" is Chinese for "beautiful", then someone named Mei Li
could Lojbanize her name as "la melb."  But why not "la melbi"?

Perhaps the authors of all these works just assumed that they didn't
need to spell out this aspect of the grammar because it was so obvious,
but it wasn't obvious to me....