Subject: Re: [lojban] World-historical and religious figures in Lojban

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 05:53:24 -0400

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, T. Peter Park wrote:
>Dear Lobypli,
>	One of the questions which I feel needs resolving (or else an agreement
>to leave unresolved) is that of standardized names for world-historical
>and religious figures in Lojban.
>	When I was first active in Lojban, in 1989-1990, I became familiar with
>the normal lojbanization of well-known contemporary and recent proper
>names, e.g.
>	la bab lycevalIE = Bob LeChevalier ("la lojbab.)

"lycevalIE" can't be a cmene because it ends in a vowel.

>	la djeimz kuk braun. = James Cooke Brown

"James" is "djeimyz" in Lojban. A word cannot have "mz" in it.
li'o

>	I also learned a few standardized Lojban divine or quasi-divine
>religious titles as gismu, e.g.: 
>	xriso xis	Christ of Christian belief
>	bujo buj bu'o	Enlightened One of Buddhism
>	jegvo jeg je'o	Jehovah, Supreme Being of Judaism/Christianity

Actually "jegvo" is someone who believes in Yahweh, or something pertaining to
that belief; His name in Lojban is "la jegvon.".

>	However, there seems to be no clear Lojban rule or practice that I'm
>aware of for Lojbanizing the proper names of the great religious
>leaders--or of major secular world-hisdtorical figures, either.
>	For instance, apart from his title "Christ" or "Messiah" which has the
>offcial Lojban gismu "xriso," Jesus Christ was Yehoshuah (the source of
>our Joshua) in Hebrew, Yeshua in the Aramaic that he spoke as his own
>native language, Iesous in theGreek in which the New Testament was
>written, and Jesus as the Latin rendition of Iesous--names which can be
>Lojbanized respectively as /la ieXOcu'ax./, /la iecu'ax./, /la ieSUS.,
>and la iesus./ Plus, we have, for instance, the modern English, French,
>Spanish, and German pronunciations of Jesus, which we may transcribe
>Lojbanically as respectively /djizys/, /jezUS/, /xeSUS/, /iezus/. So,
>which one of these we select as the basis for the preferred Lojban cmene
>for the founder of Christianity? The most plausible major contenders, I
>think, might be /la iecu'ax./, /la ieSUS./, /la iesus./, and /la
>DJEsus./

"iecu'ax" isn't right, as the last letter of His name in Hebrew or Aramaic is
`ayin, not cheth. `Ayin doesn't correspond to anything in Lojban. Cheth would
be /x/, while kaph or khaph I'd transliterate as /k/ even though khaph sounds
more like /x/.

The /s/ ending in Greek and Latin came from the fact that "Yeshua`" didn't
match the Greek or Latin form for a masculine name - masculine words in those
languages generally end in /s/, and don't have consonants they don't have
letters for.

The /a/ is not a full sound; it is a "pattach genubah", which is stuck between
high vowels and cheth or `ayin, as we stick a half-vowel between the "i" and
"r" of "fire". I would not use /u'a/ as that would not only make the /a/ a full
syllable, but also introduce a he which isn't there in the Hebrew.

>	The same problem comes up with Moses. His original Hebrew name was
>Mosheh, which would yield Lojban /la mocex./, but most Westerners know
>him as Moses, pronounced as some variant of /moses/ or /mozes/ or
>/mozys/--so, do we call the founder of Judaism "la mocex." or do we call
>him "la moses."?
>	Confucius, likewise--his native Chinese name is Kong fuzi, which might
>Lojbanize as "la kunfudzys.", but he is usually known in the West by the
>Latin name Confucius, subject to any number of distinct national
>pronunciations--the usual English/American pronunciation of Confucius
>might be Lojanized as "la kynfiucys." or "la konfiuces.", but I believe
>the European scholars who first thought up the Latinized Confucius in
>the 17th and 18th centuries had in mind something like /konfutsius/,
>which of course would Lojbanize as "la konfutsius."--so, just how WOULD
>you Lojbanize the great Chinese sage?

I'd go with "kunfudzys" - we need some consonant, and the /s/ that Latinizers
added would cause the least Confucion.

phma