From robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR Tue Nov 10 01:00:13 1998 X-Digest-Num: 4 Message-ID: <44114.4.29.959273823@eGroups.com> Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 11:00:13 +0200 From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: le'avla la djan.kau'in [is this right?] cusku di'e > Robin Turner wrote: > > > I wouldn't feel comfortable advertising Lojban to > > my Turkish friends if the name of their language would come out as > > something like "bangrturku", a word they would have great difficulty > > in pronouncing in the first place! > > I've made this point before to howls of dismay, but: > > Technically, the Lojban phonological prescription says that it's > frontness or backness (or centralness, in the case of "y"), plus > tongue height, that determines the identity of a Lojban vowel, > not roundedness. Therefore, rounded front vowels are *front* vowels > in Lojban, and the correct root form is "tirk" not "turk". Well, at least that follows Turkish vowel harmony more closely than my transposition of "ü" to "u"! On the other hand, "turk" is phonologically and orthographically closer to most other languages (Eng. "Turk", Italian "Turco" etc.). I think with loanwords in general, the main thing is that they should be as easily recognisable as possible by as many language groups as possible, especially since many, if not most, will be created on the fly. There again, perhaps I've just been corrupted by spending too much time on the Auxlang list ;-) co'o mi'e robin.