On 1 Apr 2010, at 20:14, Michael Turniansky wrote:
> I can't make heads or tales of the Latin transliteration (not to mention that you cause homophones to know be
> homonyms as well), but I can understand the Yiddish in Yiddish, and it looks a lot prettier, IMHO.
Fine, but that's not universal. Yes, it is traditional. But it is by no means unusual today. For instance, scholar Leonard Wolf translated Winnie The Pooh unto Yiddish, and this was published with one page in Hebrew script and the rest in Latin.
See http://www.amazon.com/VINI-Yiddish-Version-Winnie-Pooh/dp/0525463380/
> (Which there again, goes to your purpose in doing your project, and where it clashes with the old guard of
> lojbanists.
But not with all Lojbanists, it must be admitted.
> Are you writing it in Latin to look pretty, or to be correct, or both?
What, the Yiddish? Or the Lojban?
> Clearly, the Yiddish in Latin isn't "correct" in any meaningful sense (Sure, one transliterates short excerpts of stuff in otherwise surrounding English text, for pragmatic reasons, but I don't think that's an excuse to do an entire book that way).
The Cat in the Hat was also done in Yiddish, bi-scriptally (with the Yiddish in Latin and in Hebrew both). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/0972693904/
> So if you are just interested in doing Alice in Latin alphabets,
I don't rule out the possibility of a Hebrew-script Yiddish Alice. The translator and I have agreed to discuss that in due course. But there's no question that there is a market for a Latin-script Yiddish Alice, as I said: Carrollians, Germanicists, and Jews who don't find Hebrew script inviting. And that isn't such an unusual thing.
> regardless of of language why don't you (warning -- the following is not a straw man, since you say you don't believe in them anyhow :-) Simply print a version in "gibberish", which a mathematical algortihm to use
> reasonable word and sentence lengths, and perhaps reasonable consonant/vowel sequencing.
Well. I *am* preparing a Shaw alphabet edition.
> (Gee, I'm glad toady is April 1st, so I can say this stuff adn not be taken too seriously, but that is exactly
> the kind of vibe I get from you when you dig in your heels about issues that the linguistic community feels are nonnegotiable points)
Well, the linguistic community is not all at one on this point.
I hope to be able to put my thoughts together about narrative and discuss that in the coming days.
Michael