Re: [lojban] Re: Towards Lojban for Beginners version 2.0

[Pierre Abbat <phma@bezitopo.org>]

On Monday, February 25, 2013 09:40:01 Adam Chevalier wrote:
> That isn't my point. taibei, as a lojbanized name, isn't how its pronounced
> locally or in English.
> If there intention was to teach that lesson, important as it is, they
> should have used a proper example.

There are two things going on with that name:
1. Mandarin distinguishes aspirated and unaspirated stops; Lojban 
distinguishes voiceless and voiced stops. To preserve the Mandarin 
distinction, we should map the unaspirated /p/ to <b>, as Pinyin does.
2. Being a proper name, it should end in a consonant in Lojban. In Chinese, 
this consonant should come from Middle Chinese, if there was any, as the 
consonant affected the tone, of which there are none in Lojban. This consonant 
was /k/, and is still pronounced in Min Nan, which is spoken in Taiwan and 
coastal areas of China. Thus the Lojbanized name should be "taibeik" or 
"taibak" (or both).

I think this is too complicated to explain to beginners and another example 
should be used instead.

Pierre
-- 
When a barnacle settles down, its brain disintegrates.
Já não percebe nada, já não percebe nada.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.