Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Chinese names

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 15:16:11 -0400

At 10:28 AM 06/01/2000 +0000, Alfred W. Tüting wrote:
>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.

As Cowan noted, there is no "high English" in the US, and we explicitly 
rejected the British one.

> (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!

Why? (I am not disagreeing with you, but you make no case).

>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??

If their names are pronounced individually, it seems the only choice, and 
in the US, this is often the case. One of the first Lojbanists was a 
Southern lady named "Kim", where the vowel would be the "short i" of 
"bit". We suggested Lojbanizing it as "kim" which not only preserved the 
spelling, but sounded right to us, i.e. "standard". But she is from the 
South, where vowels are drawled (lengthened), and despite the funny 
spelling, she chose to Lojbanize her name as "ki,ym". Who are we to argue?

>I do not like at all seeing words like 'Bob',
>John etc. written lb: bab., djan. instead of bob. and djon.

My name is pronounced "bob" by Russians, but not by me. Indeed, for many 
American dialects including mine, the sound described as an "open o" or 
"short o" is almost always pronounced as an /a/, unless followed by 'r'.

>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"!

This is true for my wife, from Philadelphia, but not for me, from 
California (nor for most people from the West or Midwest). For me, the 
names "Don" and "Dawn" are exact homonyms, sounded with the 'a' of 
"father". This drives my wife crazy since my daughter has a girl friend 
named Dawn.

>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? ...)

We would reject anyone but our own being used, of course. Americans refuse 
to be standardized, especially if someone tells us that we "should". Why 
do you think the metric system has not yet been adopted?

>(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.

A point that is moot if there is no pronunciation standard.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org