From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Wed Jun 07 00:28:55 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17913 invoked from network); 7 Jun 2000 07:28:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 7 Jun 2000 07:28:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta2 with SMTP; 7 Jun 2000 07:28:53 -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 e577SiY32092 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:28:49 +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 KAA32360 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:28:43 +0300 Message-ID: <393DF91A.417C@math.bas.bg> Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 10:26:18 +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: <63.680da91.266d17db@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski pycyn@aol.com wrote: [re lojbanising Chinese] > But is there no final /m/ in Mandarin? > I suppose, /dim sum/, being food, is Cantonese. Exactly, and the Mandarin for it is _dian3 xin1_. Part of the reason I suggested {m} for M _-n_ is that it often corresponds to C _-m_, or to _m_ in Sino-Korean. In Russian M _n_ is represented as palatalised _n'_ and M _ng_ as non-palatalised _n_. The contrast is replaced by one that has no phonetic similarity to it -- but it is not lost. {ng} is available too, but then we can't guarantee that speakers won't separate the {n} from a {g} by a buffer vowel, and that would distort the sound significantly. The same goes for affricates, of course. I don't think {beid|jin|g} is acceptable. > More to the point, can we get a good vowel spread with the limited lb set? The Chinese set is even more limited, only in a different way. It shouldn't be difficult. --Ivan