From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Sun Jun 04 06:41:33 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 28511 invoked from network); 4 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 4 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO qg.egroups.com) (10.1.2.27) by mta1 with SMTP; 4 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 Received: (qmail 5492 invoked from network); 4 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 Received: from n5.onelist.org (HELO hl.egroups.com) (10.1.10.44) by iqg.egroups.com with SMTP; 4 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.10.65] by hl.egroups.com with NNFMP; 04 Jun 2000 13:41:32 -0000 Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 13:41:29 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Again: transcription of Chinese cmene Message-ID: <8hdma9+392m@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 2800 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Alfred_W._T=FCting?=" la pycyn. cusku di'e > 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... Sure, it's okay following the pinyin system (you can follow any existing system of transcription), yet this is not the question, since - not being a matter of *transliteration* - it's just the ('correct') *pronunciation* one has to follow. All systems for Mandarin romanization (e.g. Pinyin, Wade-Giles, German, Hungarian or any other language's transcription) - or even non-Roman systems like Chinese Zhuyin etc. - will do, as far as they're giving the pronunciation correctly. Think of e.g. English or Russian - one does not follow the spelling, but the sound. All those systems mentioned above are doing their job well for our purpose (some do even much more than pinyin - e.g. with regard to ancient phonology of Middle Chinese etc. For scholarly use the systems of Karlgren or v. d. Gabelentz are much better than W.-G.; but compared with this, Pinyin is useless). For example, the old systems of K. and v. d. G. are giving the consonants like that: Tenues Ten. aspiratae Fricativae (fortes) Nasales Velares k k' h ng Supradent. ch ch' sh (=Alveolares) Dentales t t' s n D. Affricatae ts ts' Labiales p p' f m Liquida l (as a lateral to the Dentales) Semivowels y, w Retroflex j (initial), erh (final) - a cerebral Fricativa lenis So e.g. the Chinese capital's name given with pe-ching (above system) is identical in pronunciation with pinyin: beijing or still another scholarly system with the spelling: peking - from which our western spelling (and wrong pronunciation!) derives etc. etc. You can write py: "shijing" (Book of Odes), W.-G.: shih-ching, Haenisch: shi-king (first i with 2 dots), or even Hungarian: si-king etc. - the pronunciation is fixed and always the same! We just are up to determine fixed Lojban rules for correctly transcribing the *sounds* (as far as Lojban allows)! So, I'd suggest: la bei,djin. i. la sh,djin. (la sh,djin. cukta loi pemci... ???) Please, bear with me and my awkward first steps. I'm not even able to write about planting tomatos ;(((