From pycyn@aol.com Sat Jun 03 15:21:59 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 13965 invoked from network); 3 Jun 2000 22:21:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 3 Jun 2000 22:21:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo13.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 3 Jun 2000 22:21:59 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo13.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.9.) id a.cb.664c4fa (658) for ; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 18:21:56 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 18:21:56 EDT Subject: RECORD: Another round on translating names To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com Or transliterating them at least. The first rule, when possible, is to get the person involved to state a preference. A Mainer with my name might prefer (roughly, for him, jawn) to my , a Southren Kim might prefer to or , several British Roberts have opted for or over or , the Midwestern US norms. Which brings up a second point, the syllabic consonants vs. /yC/. I'm sure there are rules for these in our various dialects of English or whatever, but the Lojban distinction is not very clear -- nor is how to apply it. I tend to use the syllabic consonant wherever possible: my last name is . Others prefer /yC/ virtually everywhere, using syllabic C only when it is the whole syllable. A third possibility is to use /yC/ only when it receives some stress, , "Herbert" -- a position I find attractive (stress shown because /y/ usually does not get it). Finally, most of us tend to think we can detect a difference between th two and write whatever we think we hear -- not always consistently. The forbidden /la/ in names can either be shifted to another vowel, if that is comfortable, or to /ly/ or hidden behind a dummy consonant, if one is acceptable (/x/ being about minimal, but hard for most of us to say before /l/). The /y/ solution seems the most common, opening more cases of stressed /y/. Chinese names seem to cause more trouble than most, probably reflecting the vagaries of the different romanizations floating around. The decision for names -- when the benamed is not available to have a say -- seems to be to follow the PRC pinyin system, with the following notes (py:lb) zh:(d)j, j:(d)j, q:(t)c, ch:(t)c, h:x, x:c, ng:n, sh:c, c:ts, z:dz, y:i. An i after a fricative or affricate or c or s tends to disappear, but no one seems to have a definitive answer about the choice between affricates and fricatives, as marked by the parentheses. The vowels are generally less reliable, but will do when a native speaker is not around.