From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Wed Jun 28 00:58:09 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7845 invoked from network); 28 Jun 2000 07:58:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 28 Jun 2000 07:58:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta1 with SMTP; 28 Jun 2000 07:58:05 -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 e5S7w2c13841 for ; Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:58:02 +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 KAA17114 for ; Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:58:01 +0300 Message-ID: <3959B041.792C@math.bas.bg> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:58:57 +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] PLEA: Chinese names Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski pycyn@aol.com wrote: > At the risk of starting the discussion again, can I declare that > [...] we base Chinese names (and titles) as much as possible > on the best information we have about actual pronunciation The best strategy, to be sure, and not only for Chinese names. I might add: when in doubt, choose a solution that allows the preservation of oppositions that are phonemic in the original, and/or let orthography (Pinyin) have a say -- though neither should lead to significant distortion of the sound. > This involves usually [...] taking [...] the retroflex fricatives > and affricates as palatal, Palatoalveolar. The Lojban {c} / English _sh_ / German _sch_ are palatoalveolar; the German Ich-Laut is palatal. > syllabic fricatves (including r) as vowel free where possible, > with /y/ where a vowel is necessary (or /r/ in the case of > the retroflex fricatives), Using /r/ doesn't seem to be a good idea, because syllabic (retroflex) /r/ does exist in Mandarin -- _shi_ and _shir_ are different syllables (and _shi_ is different from _she_, although _shir_ and _sher_ sound the same). --Ivan