Subject: Re: French word for "Lojban"

From: "Evgueni Sklyanin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 16:51:12 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Elrond <grey.havens@e...> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I am french and thus french-speaker, and I need some crucial
> information on this particular point: what is the gender of the word
> "Lojban" in french ?
> 
> I mean, even if "Lojban" taken as a name for LLG's work is
> genderless, we french people use languages names with genders, and
we
> almost always use the male gender (as in /le français/,
/l'anglais
est
> intéressant/, /le chinois/, etc.). Unfortunately, "Logical
Language", of
> which "Lojban" is a contraction, translates to /la langue logique/,
> /langue/ being the french word for "language" or "tongue".
> I have personally used "Lojban" as a 'male' word for the moment,
> thinking that afterall /Langage Logique/ (/langage/ is 'male' in
french)
> is also a valid translation for /Logical Language/; indeed, we
rather say
> /langage formel/ to express "formal language".
> But I might be wrong. And there is perhaps already a proper
> official gender. As unfortunately I down't know of any lojban-aware
french
> people, could you please enlighten me ?
> 
> Thanks in advance
> raph
> 
> 

In Russian, which also has genders, the word {yazyk} for "language" is
masculine. By a very fortunate coincidence, the word "Lojban" matches
the same masculine gender pattern (ending with consonant) which allows
it to be declined easily, as a native Russian word.

On the other hand, with "Esperanto", which follows the pattern of the
neutral gender (ending with -o), we have a conflict of genders with
{yazyk}. The conflict is resolved by assigning to "Esperanto" the
same masculine gender as for "language" but the price for that is that
the word "Esperanto" loses the capability to decline, which is
sometimes rather inconvenient.

Evgueni Sklyanin