[lojban] Re: le'avla

[Robin Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>]

From: Robin Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>

la djan.kau'in [is this right?] cusku di'e

> Robin Turner wrote:
>
> > I wouldn't feel comfortable advertising Lojban to
> > my Turkish friends if the name of their language would come out as
> > something like "bangrturku", a word they would have great difficulty
> > in pronouncing in the first place!
>
> I've made this point before to howls of dismay, but:
>
> Technically, the Lojban phonological prescription says that it's
> frontness or backness (or centralness, in the case of "y"), plus
> tongue height, that determines the identity of a Lojban vowel,
> not roundedness.  Therefore, rounded front vowels are *front* vowels
> in Lojban, and the correct root form is "tirk" not "turk".

Well, at least that follows Turkish vowel harmony more closely than my
transposition of "" to "u"!  On the other hand, "turk" is phonologically
and orthographically closer to most other languages (Eng. "Turk", Italian
"Turco" etc.). I think with loanwords in general, the main thing is that
they should be as easily recognisable as possible by as many language
groups as possible, especially since many, if not most, will be created on
the fly.  There again, perhaps I've just been corrupted by spending too
much time on the Auxlang list ;-)

co'o mi'e robin.


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