Subject: [lojban] Re: ancient clicks

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 20:23:25 -0500

>>I thought of proposing that some accented characters be added to the
>>alphabet,
>>to be used only in names, to indicate allophones. For instance,
>>{tcomolunmas}
>>could be written with a modified 'n' to indicate, to someone not familiar
>>with the name, that it's pronounced as 'ng'.

>But that would mean they are no longer allophones. The 'n'
>in {tcomolunmas} should be pronounced just like the 'n' in
>{lunma} would be pronounced. Whichever of the allowed
>allophones is used by a given speaker, they should use the
>same one for both words, and which one they use should
>have nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word
>in the language it was borrowed from. If one wants to retain
>a foreign pronunciation, one should use foreign quotes,
>not a lojbanized name. I think that pronouncing fully lojbanized
>words according to the original of the borrowing would sound
>wrong and affected.

When most people refer in English to the Chinese capital, it comes out
sounding like "bay-zhing". However, the Chinese say it as "pay-ching",
though with no aspiration and with the ch a little farther forward than in
English. However, using this pronunciation in English would often go
unnoticed in a conversation, and there are people out there who choose to do
so.
Presumably, most jbopre would fully lojbanize a name, but if they were
well-acquainted with the original version a few may choose to use a somewhat
more authentic pronunciation. There is nothing worng with this, although I
would object to little cues in the spelling telling people to do so.