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[lojban] Re: "la" in names
Robin Lee Powell wrote:
On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 06:40:28AM +0300, Yanis Batura wrote:
I don't understand you, people. You are not at all confused by the
fact that Lojban doesn't have VERY MANY sounds present in other
languages, but the fact that you can't spell your name exactly as
in English make you sick.
Lojban doesn't allow {la}, {lai} and {doi} in names, and that's
all. If even almost everyone, including me, of course, cannot
adhere to this rule, that is our problem, and not the language's.
Just wait, and the sence of correct lojbanization will develop in
us.
Not a single Lojbanist has *ever* internalized this rule. We know
this because *every* major Lojbanist has made this mistake, and it
showed up in "What Is Lojban?", which was proofread by at least 3
major Lojbanists.
I suspect one could find a few other critical errors that have been made
by *every* major Lojbanist.
Omission of cu or a required ku come to mind.
But then every fluent English speaker makes grammatical errors once in a
while, and when not controlled, makes such errors *frequently*.
We have no evidence, at all, that anyone can internalize this rule.
It's not about whether the rule is good or not. I don't mind in the
slightest that "la" isn't allowed; that's the least of what we have
to do to Lojbanize names. The problem is not what the rule
requires, the problem is that *we can't follow it*, and we've
*proven* we can't.
Lojbanization of names is an act of translation, and not speaking
Lojban. Speaking in Lojban, one never has to Lojbanize names, because
they are already Lojbanized. Eventually, the skilled Lojbanist will
likely use la'o quotes for foreign names rather than the current
practice of trying to Lojbanize everything.
A rule we can't follow that, in the not-following, breaks
audio-visual isomorphism is, to me, a total travesty of one of the
most important goals of the language. Whether someone gets to use
the "la" sound in their name or not is totally irrelevant to my
concerns. We're *breaking the language*, and it has to stop.
We are not breaking the language, so long as everyone agrees that it is
an error when they do so (whether or not people make that error a lot is
irrelevant). The language is broken when people are not sure what is
the correct rule, not when people know the correct rule but err in their
usage in ways that are still understandable.
When a computer starts parsing your speech stream and makes mistakes
because you stuck a la in there, ***then and only then *** will we find
out whether people can overcome the bad habit of slipping up on the la
rule. (I am sure that most programmers can think of idiosyncratic rules
in their favorite computer language which they only mastered when the
computer called them on it too many times.)
Until then, it is recognized as an error after the fact, but it is an
error of little consequence, usually leading to humor and not
misunderstanding.
lojbab
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