Subject: lojban and unix in different languages

From: Cyril Slobin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 20:33:02 +0400 (MSD)

la djan cusku di'e:

> When I first heard of it, I pronounced it /lojban/; why not?

> This seems a good point to ask one of my favorite questions: how is
> "Unix" pronounced in various languages?

"lojban" is still [LOJban] in Russian - standart pronuncation is quite
acceptaple. I myself tend to mispronounce it as [lojBAN], but this is my
own idiosyncrasy - Russian language has no fixed stress and therefore
both versions are possible. You should just know a right answer - there
is no way to guess. Considering this, it can be interesting to show this
word spelled in Cyrillic letters but without stress marked to big enough
set of people and collect statistics: how much of them guess LOJban and
how much miss (like me) to lojBAN?

And about Unix: when people are serious, they pronounce is like lojban
cmene [IUniks] - I believe this is close enough to English (although my
English pronuncation is terrific - in fact I do not speak it, but only
read an in some extent write). But there is very popular joke originated
from Soviet Era (when the difference between "us" (soviet) and "them"
(all the other world) was almost unbreakable): to read "unix" as [u.nix]
(again I use lojban for transcription - I just do not know ascii IPA),
which means "by them", and contrasted to [u.nas] - "by us", whih was for
(hypotetical) Soviet clone of Unix that should be better then original
one. It is important to realize that Cyrillic letter for sound [x] is
shaped exactly as latin letter 'x' (Russian is malylojbo? ;-).

The joke seems to be obsolete nowadays, but many newcomers to Linux
world still call it [LInux] - albeit this is considered silly.

[co'o mi'e kir. noi djica je troci 
lenu roda poi xatra do ke'axire de zo'u
su'o jufra be fi la lojban. cu pagbu de]

-- 
Cyril Slobin <[email-masked]>