Subject: Re: Chinese names

From: "Alfred W. Tüting" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 10:28:11 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Robin <robin@B...> wrote:
> pycyn@a... wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> A lot depends on regional accents. Going on rather weak memory, my
> Chinese teacher, who was from the North (and therefore had a
standard
> accent apart from the "r" attatched to every vowel!) pronounced "zh"
> pretty close to Lojban "j" except further back, and tended to
emphasise
> the final "i", so "Zhuangzi" would be "juangzy" in Lojban (add the
> consonant of your choice). .u'i however, given that BBC newsreaders
> still haven't managed to pronounce "Beijing" rometely correctly, I
don't
> think it's a major issue.
> 
> co'o mi'e robin.

IMHO, lojbanizing Chinese (and every other language's) words to
*cmene* has to follow certain standards, i.e. the 'high' language 
and not local variations. (Creating gismu, for sure is different,
because due to far stronger changes to the linguistic base, the 
resulting word anyway isn't affected that much!). Without referring
to Chinese dialects (i.e. different languages like Cantonese, 
Fujian=Hokkien language or Hoklo, Taiwanese, Hakka etc.) the
differences in pronunciation are immense even in "Mandarin" from 
one village to the next. One should necessarily stick to *one*
standard!
For example, the German language's standard displayed in IPA is not
exactly the language of one certain region, but attached to the 
rules of pronunciation of so-called "stage speech".
It's okay giving the last word of how a certain cmene has to be
pronounced, to the very bearer of the name respective. But should 
common names like Johnson, Mueller, Smith, Jack - or *Bob* follow
individual rules?? I do not like at all seeing words like 'Bob', 
John etc. written lb: bab., djan. instead of bob. and djon. . The
American way of pronunciation may be a bit different to the British 
accent, i.e. the o vowel pronounced 'darker' and more going towards
the a vowel: but it still *is* an "o" and *not* an "a"! If you 
really have a closer look at it, you'll 'see' the difference e.g.
between (American) 'Bob' and 'hum' (BTW, *what* American local 
accent should be the norm? - Boston? Middle Western? ...)
Also in other languages (Hungarian, Farsi, Norwegian etc.) there are
e.g. a-vowels sounding a bit like an open "o" (Magyar, 
Isfahan, Kirkegaard etc.), others (like Danish or Arabic) have vowels
somewhat between "a" and "e" (Dansk/densk, Khalad/
Khaled): I think one should accept the standard orthography (often
indicating *how* a sound is looked at by the native speakers 
themselves - moreorless 'psycho-linguistically').
So - American: "Robert" never can be 'felt' as "Raaaaaaabert" (maybe
by somebuddddy totally unknown of their own written 
language - a pre-school child etc.).

(Due to selfrestriction) the means of Lojban for*appropriate* display
of sounds (other than Lojban themselves) are so narrow, 
that it seems almost ridiculous to pay so much attention to slight
personal, local variations in pronouncing a language that *has* a 
fixed orthographic state pointing to a pronunciation standard. And
doing so, one nevertheless will be "getting lost in the dark and 
endless woods of concrete's variety..."

co'o mi'e .aulun.