From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Tue Mar 21 01:42:00 2000 Received: (qmail 8549 invoked from network); 21 Mar 2000 09:42:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 21 Mar 2000 09:42:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta1.onelist.com with SMTP; 21 Mar 2000 09:42:18 -0000 Received: from banmatpc.math.bas.bg (root@banmatpc.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.2]) by argo.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-6) with ESMTP id LAA27390 for ; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:41:55 +0200 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA25006 for ; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:41:54 +0200 Message-ID: <38D74401.585E@math.bas.bg> Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:42:25 +0200 Reply-To: iad@math.bas.bg Organization: Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: The Lojban List Subject: Re: [lojban] Translating names References: <8b69v1+fml0@eGroups.com> <38D6AD90.4583C26D@reutershealth.com> <200003202328.AAA27291@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-eGroups-From: Ivan A Derzhanski From: Ivan A Derzhanski Thorild Selen wrote: > John Cowan writes: > > > are the final letters "s" and "n" preferred, and if so, why? > > > > Historical accident. You are perfectly free to add "vzv" if you prefer. > > I think I can tell you why. > We are comfortable with adding -s and -n to words, because they already > are very common endings for nouns in languages that we know well -- > -s in English and Spanish, and -n in German and Finnish, for example. Common in some classes of nouns, anyway. Women's names in {-a} start looking and sounding like Lithuanian men's names when {s} is attached to them. Not necessarily a good idea. Another problem is that it is hard to tell if the {s} or {n} was there originally or is a cmene-maker. That's why I have suggested that the thing appended to vowel-final names should be something that the name couldn't end in, or would be unlikely to -- John's {vzv} is a reasonable candidate. --Ivan