states/provinces/counties

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!iad>]

>  From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@EDU.COLUMBIA.CTR>
>  >From: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad%COGSCI.ED.AC.UK@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
>
>  >Or {la .iu.es.}, which is also readily understood.

I had forgotten that pauses mustn't occur in mid-cmene.  Suppose all
my full stops are replaced by commas.  So that was {la .iu,es.}

>  Wouldn't something based on the Lojban names
>  for the letters (.ubu sy.) be better?

No, because Lojban letter names are for Lojban letters.  The name "US"
(commonly used to denote a certain country in the major language of
her population) consists of two English letters.

I don't know of any Lojban names of any non-Lojban letters.  (This
last term may mean:  (1) letters of a script such as Cyrillic, kana,
or devanagari;  (2) Roman letters not used in Lojban ("h", "q", "w");
(3) Roman letters when pertaining to a language other than Lojban
(since we're pretending that it is by chance that we use Roman letters
for writing Lojban).)

>  Why use English pronunciations for the letters?

Because the natives use them.  {la .iu,es.} is a valid cmene and it is
close to the original pronounciation.

>  Also note that around these parts, the
>  pronunciation {nu} is about as common as {niu}, if not more so.

Point taken.  (Yet in Russian and Bulgarian we use the {niu}-variant.)

>  >You have my emphatic vote against translating names or parts of names.
>
>  I think I agree here.

Good, now that you agreed with me, I'm going to argue against myself.
I just told everyone that in Bulgarian the "new" in NY is left as it
is.  But we say (lit.) `coast of elephant bone' for Cote d'Ivoire.
In Russian this latter is called {kot. divuar.}, but even there the
names of the Central and the South African Republics are translated.
What will happen to the Cape of Good Hope?  To the North and South
Pole (what do their local populations call them?  :-))  To the Sea of
Tranquility and the rest of the Moon's surface?  We will have to
translate a certain number of names.  So where is the boundary?

Ivan