Subject: Re: [lojban] le liste be ro gugde

From: Jim Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 18:34:05 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> >fk 1 la malvinas
> very good :)

I wish the Lojban community could stick to linguistics and make choices
such as this on the basis of some authoritative procedure. I was motivated
to spend a little time digging for such an authoritative list somewhere on
the web. I think the most authoritative source is probably

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html

which refers to the "Falkland Islands (Malvinas)". United Nations
documents and press releases make the same parenthesized reference; see
http://www.un.org/search/ (for "Falkland Islands", 99 hits). So unless
someone wants parentheses in the Lojban word, we're not going to get any
satisfactory guidance from authoritative sources.

If you would ask the people on the ground there what name they want, I
think 99% of them would choose the Anglicized version, and I think the
Argentines would have to agree, however much they might prefer that their
1828 settlement had been the one to continue to the present day, rather
than the 1833 British settlement, or extinct prior settlements by
France (1764), Britain (1765), or Spain (bought out France in 1766). For
these dates, see a seemingly pretty unbiased account of the history at

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/falklands-war.html

I suggest that "what the locals call themselves" is the appropriate second
choice when authoritative guidance is lacking or unsatisfactory.

James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: [email-masked] http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)