Lojban Names.

[Julian Pardoe <cbmvax!uunet!CIX.COMPULINK.CO.UK!jbdp>]

Ivan got in first with most of my nitpicks, but I still have a few things to
say.  (I'm quoting from both him and nitcion, but I haven't had time to
spearate out the different quotations.)

I agree that Ivan that the whole exercise was rather silly and that if it's
going to be done it needs to be on a regular basis with more-or-less fixed
mappings from IPA symbols to Lojban sounds.  (Absolutely fixed mappings might
not be optimal.  We might conceivably map [y] to {i} (many languages do).
However, if language X has no [u] it would be better in some ways to map [y]
to {u}.)

However, I have grave doubts about the feasibility of following a strictly
phonetic "call it what the natives call it" approach, on both practical and
theoretical grounds.  I'd prefer a "let the natives decide what to call it"
approach.  Imposing a (from the point of language X) arbitrary distortion of
the phonemes in a name might to X-speakers seem just as high-handed as
imposing a name in a dead language.  Of course, in some cases there will be
no agreed preference amongst the natives.  In that case, as with personal
names, it's a question of respecting the wishes of the person you're talking
to -- but more difficult since you could be dealing with more than one at a
time.

> By the way, the country's name is _Shqipe"ri_ (stressed on the final
> syllable), so your lojbanisation is wrong thrice: (1) the final {a} is bogus

I'm not sure about that.  Albanians often seem to add the defimite article
(-a in this case) to names.  I've seen both 'Prishtin"e' and 'Prishtina'.  My
friend Lutfi (definite article -i) could not make me see what the difference
was.  So {ctiipyri,a} might be OK.

> _Albania_ is not the Albanian name for Albania.  It shouldn't be used.

I'm not sure about this.  What the natives want to call it in Lojban might
not be the same as what they call it in their own language.  Many
Esperantists have toyed with "suomo/Suomio" instead of the rather clumsy and
ambiguous "finno/Finnlando" that most people use, but I have not yet met a
Finn who didn't prefer "finno".  I expect many Swiss would opt for
{xelveti,a} rather than {cvaits}, {suis} or whatever.  I wouldn't be suprised
if many Albanians didn't prefer {.alBAni,a} to {ctiipyri,a} (and of course
before Gheg became the basis for official language rather than Tosk (or vice
versa) the country was called {ctiipni,a}).

> But definitively {london} over {lndn} (actually, this'd make a really good
> debate; I seem to remember Colin (or was it And?) already being on the side
> on {london}.

> I'm on the side of {lndn}.  I'm not a native, but I know it for a fact
> that the natives don't call it "Lawn Dawn".

I'm more a less a native and I certainly don't call it {lndn}.  The closest
is probably {landn}, but it's not the way I pronounce it: my Lojban {a} is
too long and broad(?).  It sounds better than "{lyndn}" and strikes my ear as
almost a plausible native pronounciation (at least where the native is from
"Sarf Lunn'n".)

I'm quite satisifed with the Esperanto "Londono", but it doesn't sound so
good in Lojban -- I think the non-English stress of the Esperanto stops its
striking me a just a mispronounced "London".  A Dutch-like {londyn}/{londn}
or a Czech/Polish-style {londin} strike me as best from the sound point of
view.  I'd accept {london} though, because that fits in with the way I think
names should be done.

> beljik - belji (what's the Flemish form again?) *or*
> belgik - belgia: la brusel
> No "*or*".  The Flemish _Belgije"_ is somewhere between {bElgi,ie} and
> {bEl,ii,ie}.

Yes, no "or".  As far as I know (based on listening to Belgian radio
stations) Belgi"e is most like {belxi,y}, except that "g" is usually voiced
in Flemish.  (I believe it's unvoiced in some of the dialects spoken in the
Netherlands.)

> slovenias: la liublianas (someone say la laibax? :)
> makedoni,a slovenia

makedoni,ia sloVEni,ia

> bosnia - bosnian: la sara,evos.

Why {bosnian} and not {bosnias}?  It seems an arbitrary departure from the
pattern.  In any case it should be {bosna}, {sara,ievo}.

What have you got against [j]?  You seem to leave it out all over the place.
Does Lojban have rules about vowels in adjacent syllables that I don't know
about?  The distinction between {i,a} and {i,ia} may be slight to you but it
does exist.  The distinction between {ae} and {a,ie} is certainly
significant.

On another topic, is the {,} in {sara,evos} necessary. {ae} is not a valid
Lojban syllable, so it can only be read as {a,e}.  I've always worked on the
basis that in the absence of {,}s adjacent vowel- letters should be merged
from left to right into the longest possible syllable.  When adding a letter
produces an invalid syllable, then an unmarked syllable break must have
occurred.  If "/" shows the progress of the parse and commas separate
identified syllables:
   e.g. from {/ae}: {a/e} -> ok; {ae/} -> invalid, insert break; {a,e/} ...
   e.g. from {/aii}: {a/ii} -> ok; {ai/i} -> ok; {aii/} -> invalid, insert
        break; {ai,i/} ...
Is this the way to do it?

This leads me to ask: {.ukrai,ina}, {.ukra,ina}, {.ukrai,iina} or
{.ukra,iina}?

> What on earth is {laibax}?  It is not even a cmene (you can't have {la}
> inside, except after a consonant, right?)

Isn't that the syllable {la} not the sequence of letters?  {lai} should be OK:
it can't be interpreted as {la,i} and so there's no danger of hearing the
word {la}.

> xajistan - xajistana: la .erevan
> {xa,iistAn}.

It looked like {xaiastan} in my copy of "Sovetakan Hajastan".  {.ierevan}!
Another missing [j].  (As far as I know, it's not just a product of Russian
transliteration.  Which leads me to ask: Why on earth do the French write
"Eltsine" and then *say* it that way too!)

>  rumania - rumanias:

> Nonsense.  It is _Roma^nia_, where _a^_ is the back counterpart of
> {i} alias the unrounded counterpart of {u}.  Make it {y}.

I believe the "o" is somewhat bogus, unstressed "o" having become "u" (and
being spelt as such) in Romanian.  The orthographic "o" is a political/cult-
ural point and a good example of where following the pronunciation may not be
what the natives want!  The last part of the word is -{NI,ia}.  I guess {y}
is the best mapping for "^a" but Romanian does have a {y}: a-breve.

>  rusko - la moskvas. (Please, god, not mozgvas or moskfas!),

Well, if {moskfas} is what the system gives you {moskfas} is what you get --
whether it please God or not.  You escape in this case but I don't suppose
{myskvA} makes you feel any better.  It's not going to be very recognizable
to someone who doesn't speak Russian though.  How the hell is someone who's
never heard of Novosibirsk going to look up {nyvysibIrsk} in his atlas --
even his Russian-language atlas?

I really can't see a strict pronunciation-preserving approach working in
practice. "Let the natives decide" won't work in all cases, but in most of
the really hard cases (e.g. border rivers) pronunciation-preservation will
have exactly the same problems.  In fact, if names in dead languages are
allowed "let the natives decide" may often work where pronunciation-preserv-
ation fails.  Over time, conventional names will probably become accepted in
some of the difficult cases.  Let's hope this process is well advanced by the
time the UN decides to issue its first official documents in Lojban :-)

On a totally different topic, could someone please explain what "cleft
places" are.  By not understanding this term, I seem to be missing out on
some interesting discussions.

I found the discussion of the phone game very interesting, even though the
discussion wasn't really full enough for me to understand all the issues.
(At the moment, I have almost no materials.)  I found the phone game of more
benefit that longer translations of texts.  I'd like to see more "translate
this into English" challenges to!

-- la djuliyn.