Subject: Chinese names

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 18:11:16 EDT

I suppose this question has to have been settled in the process of using 
Chinese words to contribute to Lojban gismu, but I do not remember what the 
rules are. The problem is that English (and Lojban, more or less) has sounds 
that are simultaneously voiced, weak, and unaspirated, contrasting with 
another set of voiceless, strong, and aspirated. In Chinese, the voiced 
voiceless contrast drops out (as in French, the aspirated/un- does, pretty 
much), though much of the patterning is otherwise the same. So the 
temptation -- and the more recent English -- at least -- scholarly usage has 
been to use English voiced for Chinese unaspirated with some minor exceptions 
. The older style system --even with all its diacritics(which no one ever 
uses all of) -- is just obscureon some issues. For example of relevance, is 
the "Ch" of "Chuangtzu" the affricate lb/dj/ or the fricative /j/?
The new system seems to say the latter (and that "ts" is just /z/), but the 
latter is generally said to be wrong and so the former may be also. 
And many of thes issues get changed before "i", which is much li ke lb/y/but 
is very different after these fric/affric sounds (and so they are often 
spelled differently then). Something surely can be worked out within lb 
phonology.