Subject: Re: Transliterations survey

From: "A.W.T." <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 20:28:41 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., "And Rosta" <a.rosta@n...> wrote:
> Aulun:
> > Remember the French-Japanese movie "Hiroshima mon amour" long ago 
> > with the = lovers pronouncing the city's name differently: 
> > she (Japanese) somehow gives it as "Hrosma".
> 
> She is french. He is japanese. Which says "Hrosma"? He?

Oh, you're correct! My excellent long-term memory was cheating me: Looking =
through my collection of movie brochures 
("Illustrierte Film-Bühne" etc.) I once collected are telling me: "Hiroshim=
a mon amour" Alain Resnais, Emmanuele Riva & Eiji 
Okada, script and dialogues Marguerite Duras(!). But how come you to know?!=
(BTW, it's a pretty complicated story...).
Yes, and it really has to be him (Japanese) to pronounce the name as "Hrosm=
a", because a Japanese *female's* pronunciation most 
probably would have been different.

> (But I think you sort of missed Evgeny/Pierre's point, which is
> that something like /xirosima/ & /xukusima/ is consistent not 
> necessarily with a mapping between Lojban phonetics and Japanese 
> phonetics but with a mapping between Lojban phonology and 
> Japanese phonology.)

No, don't think so. Creating cmene has to consider original phonetics and p=
honology, but also intelligibility by others: although in 
Japanese (bilabial) "f" and "h" don't seem to be phonems, there's no good r=
eason not to give it using "f" in Lojban. (This might be 
different e.g. with names like "Fujian" and "Hokkien" both equally known in=
the world.)

I don't think that it is necessary to always consider the origial's phonemi=
cs: although in German language the "ich"- and "ach"-
Lauts (and many "ch"s in between according to their position in the word!) =
are not phonemic, whereas "ch" and "sh" are, it doesn't 
matter to e.g. give "München" as {mincyn} or {minxyn} which both are - more=
orless - intelligible (and both as far from the 
correct native pronunciation). Russians e.g. make themselves understood say=
ing "ix xap dix lip" (for I like/love you), when a 
native French would be uttering "ic 'ab dic liib" for it - and also is unde=
rstandable to a speaker of German.

co'omi'e .aulun.