From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Mon Jun 05 01:03:41 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8975 invoked from network); 5 Jun 2000 08:03:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Jun 2000 08:03:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta3 with SMTP; 5 Jun 2000 08:03:30 -0000 Received: from banmatpc.math.bas.bg (root@banmatpc.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.2]) by argo.bas.bg (8.11.0.Beta1/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-6) with ESMTP id e5583LY23635 for ; Mon, 5 Jun 2000 11:03:22 +0300 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA22501 for ; Mon, 5 Jun 2000 11:03:21 +0300 Message-ID: <393B5EF9.13F3@math.bas.bg> Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 11:04:09 +0300 Reply-To: iad@math.bas.bg Organization: Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: The Lojban List Subject: Re: [lojban] Again: transcription of Chinese cmene References: <8hdma9+392m@eGroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Alfred W. Tüting wrote: > 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 [...] 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. Pinyin is not a transcription system; it is a romanisation system. Transcription means that you represent the sound of language L1 using the script of language L2, following the symbol-to-sound correspondences of language L2; and whether you can attain a close representation depends on the closeness of the two phonologies. Romanisation means that you represent the sound of language L1 in the Roman script in a way expressly designed for the purpose. So when PY writes, say, the initial sound of the name of the capital of China as _b_, that is because in PY the letter _b_ stands for the unaspirated unvoiced labial stop. By contrast, writing it as {b} in Lojban (or Russian, or ...) implies that it should be pronounced as a voiced stop. Which is as it should be: it introduces a distinction that the source language lacks (voicing) to make up for one that the target language lacks (aspiration). Of course one should strive for maximal preservation of the sound, but the preservation of contrast is also a very worthwhile goal. Chinese is a language with gargantuan homophony as it is, and it becomes worse when you lose the tones. So it is vital to collapse as few syllables as possible. I could live with a few artificial distinctions. For example, how about lojbanising Chinese _-n_ as {m}, so that _-ng_ can unambiguously be {n}? -- (Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences