From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Thu Apr 13 05:00:20 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 6209 invoked from network); 13 Apr 2000 12:00:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 13 Apr 2000 12:00:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta2 with SMTP; 13 Apr 2000 12:00:17 -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 PAA19613 for ; Thu, 13 Apr 2000 15:00:13 +0300 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 PAA31516 for ; Thu, 13 Apr 2000 15:00:06 +0300 Message-ID: <38F5B6E7.3D45@math.bas.bg> Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 15:00:39 +0300 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] RECORD:translating names References: <200004122035.QAA20593@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-eGroups-From: Ivan A Derzhanski From: Ivan A Derzhanski John Cowan wrote: > Bob LeChevalier scripsit: > > I'm not sure I agree with this one, especially since in the case > > in point, Russian phonotactics rules dictate a Lojbanizable form > > for the name, by making voicing agree with the final consonant > > of the group. > > Actually, Ivan explained some years ago (don't have the archives handy) > why /moskva/ doesn't violate Russian phonotactics rules in this case. It doesn't because in Russian [v] and its palatalised counterpart [v;] behave as sonorants, not as (voiced) fricatives, for the purposes of of assimilation. So [kv] is permissible exactly in the same way as [kl] and [kr] are, and the name of the Russian capital is pronounced [m@'skva], not **[m@'zgva]. Ditto for Bulgarian and Serbo-Croat (I'm not quite sure about the West Slavic languages, but I expect they're no different). Why is that? Well, /f/ is a recent acquisition in Slavic; /v/ started life as a glide (it does after all go back to PIE _w_), and while it didn't have a voiced counterpart, it was in all respects an entity of the same category as /l/ and /r/. When /f/ became a phoneme in its own right, /v/ became phonetically a paired voiced fricative, but phonologically it kept its old sonorant status. The best lojbanisation is probably {u}: {moskuA}. Note that only one of the six Lojban source languages, English, has /f/:/v/ as a full-fledged pair of fricatives. Of the rest, * only Chinese, Arabic and Spanish have /f/ as a common sound; in Russian and Hindi it is almost restricted to loanwords (and many Hindi speakers pronounce [p{h}] in its stead); * only Russian has /v/, and even there it is not a genuine voiced fricative. The closest thing is /B/ in Spanish, /w/ in the rest. (Granted that in this particular respect Spanish is not typical of the Romance branch.) -- (Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences