Re: [lojban] Situation with ISO-fuhivla for countries.

[Pierre Abbat <phma@bezitopo.org>]

On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 20:15:09 Krzysztof Sobolewski wrote:
> Say, Poland. It's Polska over here, but that fails right away because {lo
> polska} means something like "colours of Polynesia". It's pretty, but it
> misses the mark by half the globe. If we insist on the -o ending, I
> personally settled for {polco}. Somewhat awkward, Russian-sounding, but
> workable.
> 
> BTW: An "alternative" name for Poland is Lechistan. But that falls apart as
> {le xista[n]}. So who knows, maybe the gismu for Poland should be {xista}
> with {le} as the mandatory gadri ;)

{la .lexistan.} is perfectly valid. I wouldn't use {xista} though. I did come 
up with {mraigo} for Welsh by dropping the initial syllable from "Cymraeg", 
and similarly {skalduna} for Basque.

> (Yes, I know that in some cases there would not be consensus among said
> inhabitants. There's a joke that where there are two Poles there are three
> opinions, so I guess my example is the worst of all...)

The third opinion being the equator? :)

A few countries that may not be obvious:
la .drukiul./drukiulo
la .sakartulos./kartuli
la .samegrelos./margaluri (not a whole country, part of the preceding, and I'm 
not sure about the cmevla)
la .auskalerik./skalduna (straddles a boundary)

There may be disagreements on how to spell Venezuela. I incline toward 
{venesuelas}. In Spanish, /b/ and /v/ are often mixed up, and there's no 
voicing distinction of /s/ (or /θ/ in the dialects that pronounce <z> so). 
Italian, though, has separate /b/ and /v/ phonemes, as does Lojban. The 
country was named for Venice; in Italian the V is /v/ and the z in voiceless. 
The brivla was {vensuela}, but that's now invalid because of the {sue} 
syllable. Should we change it to {vensola}?

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

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