From phma@oltronics.net Fri Aug 25 03:34:32 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30326 invoked from network); 25 Aug 2000 10:34:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 25 Aug 2000 10:34:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.oltronics.net) (204.213.85.8) by mta2 with SMTP; 25 Aug 2000 10:34:31 -0000 Received: from neofelis (root@localhost) by mail.oltronics.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id GAA21403; Fri, 25 Aug 2000 06:31:47 -0400 X-BlackMail: 207.15.133.26, neofelis, , 207.15.133.26 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 06:33:23(EDT) on August 25, 2000 To: lojban@egroups.com, IALlist@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] World-historical and religious figures in Lojban Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 05:53:24 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.29.2] Content-Type: text/plain Cc: cbrooks@pilot.infi.net, james.miranda@gte.net, RAllaire@aol.com, oldocjk_a@yahoo.com References: <39A60190.40AD@erols.com> In-Reply-To: <39A60190.40AD@erols.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0008250617030K.00898@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Pierre Abbat 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