Subject: Re: coi rodo - mi'e .aulun.

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 12:37:26 PDT

la alfred cusku di'e

>Jorge,
>
>thanks for your prompt translation of 'Yu Chih Lo' (finpe pluka/Piski
>Hedo). Wow! - As a newbie, I'm now having a whole bunch of
>stuff for further studying the Lojban language. BTW, comparing your
>version (and the English one too) with the ancient Chinese
>text, one easily can realize how the amount of words differs - Alas,
>that seems to be the price for unambiguity!

I translated straight from the English, I don't know any Chinese.
Even so, the Lojban version came out a little shorter than
the English, but I'm sure that someone translating from the
original could get a much better Lojban version. You can
certainly make it more ambiguous if that's what is wanted.

>I appreciate your view on both philosophers seemingly just holding
>their positions respective - we recently had a thorough
>discussion on this topic in our Chinese forum (except their different
>standpoints they start from, each philosopher apparently is
>using the same 'logic').

They both seem to take for granted that there is such thing
as a pleasure of fish. Chuangtze says he can know what that
pleasure is in the same way he can know what other people
know, by looking at his feelings. Huitze says he cannot know
what that pleasure is, and won't accept the common sense
that if fish do take pleasure at something then darting
about seems like a likely candidate. Neither of them seem
to consider the possibility that maybe fish don't take
pleasure at things.

>As for writing Chinese names (cmene) in Lojban:
>I'd tend to prefer writing tcuang,ts. (Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi), because
>in Chinese there aren't voiced consonants, just unaspirated
>and aspirated ones.

The only problem is that you can't have a voiced-unvoiced pair
in Lojban, so {g,t} even separated by a comma, is not permitted.

>Yet, since the rules most probably (also in
>writing cmene) don't allow the form tc'uang.

No, {'} can only come between two vowels.

>(aspirated consonant),
>perhaps one would have to write djuang. (unaspirated) and tcuang
>(aspirated)

Those two are fine.

>or maybe (I'd like this better) tjuang and tcuang.

{tj} is not allowed.

>(BTW, is 'ng' cluster allowed??? Otherwise one would be forced to
>write -uan.)

Yes, it is allowed, but the g is fully pronounced.

>The last sound in Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi is *not* a vowel, so it's
>written -dz, maybe -tz (unaspirated) - (tzu/zi) and -ts
>(aspirated) - (tz'u/ci).
>Be aware of that in tse/ze there is indeed a vowel, hence -y in
>Lojban.
>
>Some Chinese cmene:
>mau.tzydun(g). (Mao Tse-tung/Mao Zedong)

"tz" not allowed, maybe mau.zydun

>dyng.siaupin(g). (Teng Hsiao-p'ing/Deng Xiaoping)

Ok.

>lau,tz. (Lao-tzu/Laozi)

"tz" not allowed. Maybe lau,ts

>tcan(g),an. (Ch'ang-an/Chang'an)

Ok.

>xu(e)i,tz. (Huei-tzu/Huizi)

xuei,ts

>.aulun(g). (aolung/aolong) ;))
>
>co'o mi'e .alfred.
>

co'o mi'e xorxes

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