Subject: Re: Transliterations survey

From: "Evgueni Sklyanin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 15:59:58 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@u...> wrote:
> 
> Lojbanists,
> 
> Please evaluate as voluminously as you can the following candidate
> transliterations. Please only comment on an instance if you know the 
exact
> pronunciation of the original. Feel free to try these on
> mundanes^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnon-Lojbanists. Ignore the fact that some of 
these
> are not legal cmene. Anecdotes about transliterations of these 
placenames
> in your native languages are also welcome.
> 

> Fukushima, Japan
> fukucima.
> fikicima.
> fykycima.
I wonder why no one considered the variant {fukusima.}
A few points in favor of {si} versus {ci}:

1. The consonant in {si/shi} is only a positional phonological 
variant of {s} preceding {i}. Compared to {s} preceding {a/o/e/u}, 
it is palatalized and only slightly sibilant.

Being a native Russian speaker and having no professional linguistic
training, I can hear clearly that {s} in {si/shi} is palatalized.
As for the degree of sibilant-ness, my perception varies in a rather
wide range.

2. The traditional Japanese syllabary {kana} puts {si/shi} in the same
row with {sa/su/se/so}. For this reason, the official Japanese
roman transcription taught in schools uses {si}. The variant {shi} is
used by the so-called Hapburn transcription serving mainly to
teach Japanese to English-speakers. 

3. The standard Russian transcription uses {si}, not {shi}. Russian
{shi} sounds very different from {si} and Japanese {si/shi}, the 
consonant being nonpalatalized, and the vowel being closer to Turkish
{I} than to {i}.

co'o mi'e .evgenis.