It's all well and good to talk about the theoretical issues that might
come up someday when coining terms for all the Bantu languages, but I
think we might get a clearer view of those issues if we could first
convincingly resolve the issues that we're already encountering in the
language as we use it. The way we're heading now is towards cultural
fu'ivla for everything, none of which are used, and cultural gismu
also for any culture that actually has any Lojbanists or that we
regularly talk about. That's not what any of us want! But that's
where we're headed! We need not just an idea of what would be a more
rational method, but a strategy for how we're going to move the
language in the new direction we choose.
mi'e la stela selckiku
mu'o
sweden: { gugde la .sy .ebu }
swedish: { bangu la .sy .vy }
My serious suggestion has been to spell out the names of the ISO
standards. Lojban claims to be culturally neutral and then decides to
forgo the worlds largest standards-making body, an international
non-government organization with a mission of consensus-based
decision-making... can we do it better? Should we try?
What I mean is, leave these decisions up to the professionals,
lojbanists have more awesome things to be doing. Lojban should be
about using lojban, not krokodili cultural omphaloskepsis in the name
of 'neutrality' ...no solution is absolutely neutral.
co'o mi'e korbi
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> Lojban day-to-day: What do we say for Sweden and Swedish?sweden: { gugde la .sy .ebu }
swedish: { bangu la .sy .vy }
My serious suggestion has been to spell out the names of the ISO
standards.
Lojban claims to be culturally neutral and then decides to
forgo the worlds largest standards-making body, an international
non-government organization with a mission of consensus-based
decision-making... can we do it better? Should we try?
I think fu'ivla should be based on how native speakers speak them. But
it has the problems chris commented... Nevertheless, I think it would be
worth trying (given that all fu'ivla should be that way)
BTW, I like sfe'ero :)
mu'o mi'e .leos.
--
My lojban journal: http://learninglojban.wordpress.com
My personal blog: http://leomolas.tumblr.com
Doesn't parse (try "gugde la me sy.ebu"). And are the people of Cyprus
speakers of Welsh?
Pierre
--
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci
Some random thoughts here, I'm not suggesting this is necessarily a good idea:
aaa -> bangu'a'a'a
aab -> bangu'a'abu
aba -> bangu'abu'a
abb -> bangu'abubu
baa -> bangubu'a'a
bab -> bangubu'abu
bba -> bangububu'a
bbb -> bangubububu
The remaining problem would be what to do with codes containing h, q,
w, y, which cannot appear in fu'ivla.
One option is to convert h->x, q->k, w->v, y->j and use a different
vowel (instead of "u") for those, so:
aah -> bangu'a'axe
aqa -> bangu'ake'a
aww -> bangu'aveve
yaa -> banguje'a'a
This scheme is univocal and reversible.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
I just realized this one is actually a lujvo, so, it would need some
additional tweaking.
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The problem is it only works for a few selected examples, not as a general rule.
In my opinion, if you are going to use the codes, then there should be
a systematic transformation to get the fu'ivla from the code and the
code from the fu'ivla. Otherwise, I see no point in preferring the
code to the autonym.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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The problem is it only works for a few selected examples, not as a general rule.
OK, I'll hold back my skepticism until I see the full list. Or at
least an unbiased sample, let's say aaa, aab, aba, abb, baa, bab, bba,
bbb.
(Not sure if all of them are in use, if not, replace a vowel or a
consonant by another vowel or consonant.)
> Some will need
> various changes to make them fit (three-consonant codes, for example, will
> need a buffer vowel, or the addition of an autonym vowel somewhere, for
> example), but there is no reason that we couldn't do that in a consistent
> way, so that, say, if you see a buffer vowel, get it out of there when
> you're looking for the autonym (that was in obvious, I realize, but it could
> still work for other things).
How will you tell a buffer vowel apart from a vowel coming from the code?
> I think, too, that the representation of language family is a great idea,
> but I wonder about giving ourself more leeway with the form these would
> take. {-ine}, for example, works pretty well; {-esx} less so. We might be
> able to get a better match if we used the language family codes as the first
> part of the fu'ivla and changed them a bit to assure that they had a good
> cluster in a require position; we thus wouldn't have to tweak the language
> code as much (if at all, except clusters), making it more recognizable.
> {-ine}, for example, might become {.inde-}. And, presumably, the language
> code is more important to be able to look up than the family code.
That starts to look a bit like what I proposed, with the prefix
"bangu-" replaced by something coming from the language family.
> We could also do some other things to make pretty clusters that are more
> autonymic. For example, the Niger-Congo language family is spread across
> nearly all of Africa, and is such a large grouping as to not be that useful.
> But, as mentioned before, nearly all Bantu languages (a large subset of
> Niger-Congo) have a prefix for languages of the form ki-, with variants in
> different languages like iki- and ichi-. Thus, we could use a separate
> prefix for Bantu languages, say {itci-} or {tci-} making them look more
> autonymic.
".itci" won't work, as the ".i" will fall off, "tci-" might, but
depending on what follows, you could end up with lujvo forms.
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On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Christopher Doty <suomi...@gmail.com> wrote:OK, I'll hold back my skepticism until I see the full list. Or at
>
> I think it works for all examples, not just a select few.
least an unbiased sample, let's say aaa, aab, aba, abb, baa, bab, bba,
bbb.
(Not sure if all of them are in use, if not, replace a vowel or a
consonant by another vowel or consonant.)
> Some will needHow will you tell a buffer vowel apart from a vowel coming from the code?
> various changes to make them fit (three-consonant codes, for example, will
> need a buffer vowel, or the addition of an autonym vowel somewhere, for
> example), but there is no reason that we couldn't do that in a consistent
> way, so that, say, if you see a buffer vowel, get it out of there when
> you're looking for the autonym (that was in obvious, I realize, but it could
> still work for other things).
> I think, too, that the representation of language family is a great idea,That starts to look a bit like what I proposed, with the prefix
> but I wonder about giving ourself more leeway with the form these would
> take. {-ine}, for example, works pretty well; {-esx} less so. We might be
> able to get a better match if we used the language family codes as the first
> part of the fu'ivla and changed them a bit to assure that they had a good
> cluster in a require position; we thus wouldn't have to tweak the language
> code as much (if at all, except clusters), making it more recognizable.
> {-ine}, for example, might become {.inde-}. And, presumably, the language
> code is more important to be able to look up than the family code.
"bangu-" replaced by something coming from the language family.
> We could also do some other things to make pretty clusters that are more".itci" won't work, as the ".i" will fall off, "tci-" might, but
> autonymic. For example, the Niger-Congo language family is spread across
> nearly all of Africa, and is such a large grouping as to not be that useful.
> But, as mentioned before, nearly all Bantu languages (a large subset of
> Niger-Congo) have a prefix for languages of the form ki-, with variants in
> different languages like iki- and ichi-. Thus, we could use a separate
> prefix for Bantu languages, say {itci-} or {tci-} making them look more
> autonymic.
depending on what follows, you could end up with lujvo forms.
According to Wikipedia, they are all in use:
aaa: Ghotuo
aab: Alumu-Tesu
aba: Abé
abb: Bankon
baa: Babatana
bab: Bainouk-Gunyuño
bba: Baatonum
bbb: Barai
I propose those eight be used as test cases.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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Since bangu'abu'a means "language-work-brother" (which by a happy
coincidence happens to be kind of what we are now) that scheme fails.
So here is an improved version (it also gives shorter words):
aaa -> banga'a'a
aab -> banga'abu
aba -> bangabu'a
abb -> bangabubu
baa -> banbu'a'a
bab -> banbu'abu
bba -> banbubu'a
bbb -> banbububu
For codes that begin with "n":
naa -> baurnu'a'a
nab -> baurnu'abu
nba -> baurnubu'a
nbb -> baurnububu
And to answer the question in the subject:
swe (Swedish) -> bansuve'e
swl (Swedish Sign Language) -> bansuvelu
OK, I found another glitch. Codes that begin with "g" and codes that
begin with "u" give identical results:
uam -> bangu'amu
gam -> bangu'amu
So, to fix that, codes that begin with "g" will have to pattern with
those that begin with "n":
gaa -> baurgu'a'a
gab -> baurgu'abu
gba -> baurgubu'a
gbb -> baurgububu
Hopefully now everything is unambiguous.
Some examples:
eng (English) -> bangenugu
spa (Spanish) -> bansupu'a
rus (Russian) -> banru'usu
jbo (Lojban) -> banjubu'o
Apparently Niger-Congo is the family with the most members, so that's
not too surprizing.
So, you want to create a prefix or series of prefixes for each of (how
many? more than a hundred?) families?
Is it really worth going to all that trouble? What's the advantage,
over just using bang-, ban-, baur-?
> but it does illustrate, as
> do the examples from .xorxes., the idea of different initial elements. So,
> Niger-Congo might be {nirk} when the ISO is V initial, {nirko} when it is VV
> initial, etc....
If you do that, how do you distinguish code "aab" from code "oab"?
"nirko'abu" could be either. (At least if they both happen to be in
the same family.) And why would you want to change the vowel?
> aaa -> nirka'a'a' (cf. banga'a'a)
> aab -> nirko'abu (cf. banga'abu)
> aba -> nirkaba or ... (cf. bangabu'a)
I could do "bangaba" too. The reason I prefer "bangabu'a"is that this
way every language name has four syllables. But if giving three
syllables to languages with VCV codes does not violate neutrality,
that can be done.
> abb -> ... bangabubu
> baa -> ... banbu'a'a
> bab -> babnicV or nirbabV (cf. banbu'abu)
"nirbabV" works with a nir- family code, but it wouldn't work with
other family codes.
> bba -> ... banbubu'a
> bbb -> tagbVbVbV (cf. banbububu)
tag- won't work for codes that begin with voiceless consonants.
.ui .ue lo do banjubu'o sidbo cu cizra melbi mi doi bangu'abu'a
I've never heard of any of those languages, except Ghotuo which I found when
looking at template aaa on Wiktionary, and I think that if you run this
nunfu'ivlazba to completion, you're going to end up with a humongous list
that's as desuet as a dule of doves.
The way language names are coined in natural languages is completely
different. People who are interested in a particular language (hereinafter
Pelonian) find out what the Pelonians call their language (which requires
learning some Pelonian) and what their neighbors the Almonians call it. Then
they decide what to call it in, say, English. Then they write reports about
Pelonian and other people learn that there is such a language. They may, on
learning more Pelonian, figure out that they used the wrong word to name the
language ("Auca", for instance, is an exonym meaning "enemy", so they are now
called "Waorani" or other spellings thereof).
I do not see a need for coining a type-4 or even type-3 fu'ivla for Baatonum
or Babatana until some Lojbanist is interested in those languages. Leave them
at type 1.
Pierre
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
Well, the nice thing about my algorithm is that you don't really need
to make any actual list. You just know that for any three letter
language code, there is a fu'ivla there ready to be used that goes
with that code. You don't create it until you want to use it.
> I do not see a need for coining a type-4 or even type-3 fu'ivla for Baatonum
> or Babatana until some Lojbanist is interested in those languages. Leave them
> at type 1.
You can think of "banbubu'a" not as meaning "x1 is Baatonum" but
rather as meaning "x1 is the language with ISO-code 'bba'".
Then if Baatonum for some reason became a hosehold word in
Lojbanistan, and people found "banbubu'a" too cumbersome, a more
friendly name could be coined.
2010/4/3 Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>:
For countries:
VV -> gugde'V'V
VC -> gugde'VCu
CV -> gugdeCu'V
CC -> gugdeCuCu
Codes with "h", "q", "w", "y" use "xe", "ke", "ve", "je" instead of
"xu", "ku", "vu", "ju".
For languages:
VVV -> bangV'V'V
VVC -> bangV'V'Cu
VCV -> bangVCu'V
VCC -> bangVCuCu
CVV -> banCu'V'V
CVC -> banCu'VCu
CCV -> banCuCu'V
CCC -> banCuCuCu
special case: codes that start with "n" or "g":
(n|g)VV -> baur(n|g)u'V'V
(n|g)VC -> baur(n|g)u'VCu
(n|g)CV -> baur(n|g)uCu'V
(n|g)CC -> baur(n|g)uCuCu
On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Christopher Doty <suomi...@gmail.com> wrote:Apparently Niger-Congo is the family with the most members, so that's
> So, I kind of distracted from this, but here is what I had come up with.
> Putting the language families first, and having alternate forms for
> different clusters, does work a lot better.
> Also, this is a bit weird, since six of these eight languages are
> Niger-Congo, so also isn't quite a random sample,
not too surprizing.
So, you want to create a prefix or series of prefixes for each of (how
many? more than a hundred?) families?
Is it really worth going to all that trouble? What's the advantage,
over just using bang-, ban-, baur-?
> but it does illustrate, asIf you do that, how do you distinguish code "aab" from code "oab"?
> do the examples from .xorxes., the idea of different initial elements. So,
> Niger-Congo might be {nirk} when the ISO is V initial, {nirko} when it is VV
> initial, etc....
"nirko'abu" could be either. (At least if they both happen to be in
the same family.) And why would you want to change the vowel?
> aaa -> nirka'a'a' (cf. banga'a'a)I could do "bangaba" too. The reason I prefer "bangabu'a"is that this
> aab -> nirko'abu (cf. banga'abu)
> aba -> nirkaba or ... (cf. bangabu'a)
way every language name has four syllables. But if giving three
syllables to languages with VCV codes does not violate neutrality,
that can be done.
> abb -> ... bangabubu"nirbabV" works with a nir- family code, but it wouldn't work with
> baa -> ... banbu'a'a
> bab -> babnicV or nirbabV (cf. banbu'abu)
other family codes.
> bba -> ... banbubu'atag- won't work for codes that begin with voiceless consonants.
> bbb -> tagbVbVbV (cf. banbububu)
Wikipedia says ISO 639-5 has 114 codes for language families:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639
> in
> part, this is because our decisions about how to group things could change
> the number. As I mentioned yesterday, we could split Niger-Congo into Bantu
> and, basically, "other" Niger-Congo. Likewise with Chinese (which,
> linguistically, is either a worthless term, or a family and not a language).
> There are only five or six major ones on the list that I've been looking
> at, but if we keep to the highest level classifications possible, it
> shouldn't be too bad.
But if we go with ISO for languages, it's hard to justify using a
different arbitrary preference for families.
> I think using the language families has any number of advantages. First, I
> was envisioning this as something that would be both useful to linguists and
> easily learnable. I think a list of alphabetized language names in Lojban
> would be really scary, and possibly worthless, if they all started exactly
> the same (granted, you could sort some other way, but still). An
> alphabetized list with family names at the beginning, though, would actually
> group languages together by family. Plus, I really just think learning
> words which are half the same as any other word for any other language is
> going to make learning language names REALLY difficult, and thus likely
> cause these to never be adopted.
It's only the first out of four syllables that is common to all. And
the other three syllables correspond each to one of the letters of the
code, so if you know the code you know the fu'ivla, and vice versa.
> I don't think length violates neutrality--even if it does, we can't do much
> about it given the restrictions of Lojban phonotactics.
With my proposal every language uses four syllables. The number of
letters varies slightly if you don't count the apostrophe, and
depending on the three prefixes.
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Christopher Doty <suomi...@gmail.com> wrote:Wikipedia says ISO 639-5 has 114 codes for language families:
>
> I don't think it would take 100, but I'm not sure of the specific number;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639
> inBut if we go with ISO for languages, it's hard to justify using a
> part, this is because our decisions about how to group things could change
> the number. As I mentioned yesterday, we could split Niger-Congo into Bantu
> and, basically, "other" Niger-Congo. Likewise with Chinese (which,
> linguistically, is either a worthless term, or a family and not a language).
> There are only five or six major ones on the list that I've been looking
> at, but if we keep to the highest level classifications possible, it
> shouldn't be too bad.
different arbitrary preference for families.
> I think using the language families has any number of advantages. First, IIt's only the first out of four syllables that is common to all. And
> was envisioning this as something that would be both useful to linguists and
> easily learnable. I think a list of alphabetized language names in Lojban
> would be really scary, and possibly worthless, if they all started exactly
> the same (granted, you could sort some other way, but still). An
> alphabetized list with family names at the beginning, though, would actually
> group languages together by family. Plus, I really just think learning
> words which are half the same as any other word for any other language is
> going to make learning language names REALLY difficult, and thus likely
> cause these to never be adopted.
the other three syllables correspond each to one of the letters of the
code, so if you know the code you know the fu'ivla, and vice versa.
1. For language fu'ivla, which part of ISO 639 is being used: 639-2 or
639-3? (I prefer 639-3, since it's basically the same as 639-2 except
more robust.)
2. For country fu'ivla, why would using ISO 3166-2 (three-letter
codes) be worse than 3166-1 (two-letter codes)? The three-letter
codes:
A. Resemble their autonyms more
B. Are more future-robust
C. Would have the same algorithm as the languages, except for the n/
g exception (I think).
On Apr 3, 8:45 am, Jorge Llambías <jjllamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
As chris said, we were always using iso 639-3
>
> 2. For country fu'ivla, why would using ISO 3166-2 (three-letter
> codes) be worse than 3166-1 (two-letter codes)? The three-letter
> codes: A. Resemble their autonyms more B. Are more future-robust C.
> Would have the same algorithm as the languages, except for the n/ g
> exception (I think).
I didn't found iso 3166-2 as a three letter code. What I found is a
variable letter code with two places, one for the 3166-1 code, and
another one for territories of that country. It even has alpha-numeric
codes... so, it's complicated.
Quote from the page:
> ISO 3166-2 contains a complete breakdown into a relevant level of
> administrative subdivisions of all countries listed in ISO 3166-1.
> The code elements used consist of the alpha-2 code element from ISO
> 3166-1 followed by a separator and a further string of up to three
> alphanumeric characters e. g.
>
> DK-025 for the Danish county Roskilde
> IT-MI for the Italian province of Milano
> MG-T for the Antananarivo province in Madagascar
http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/background_on_iso_3166/iso_3166-2.htm
Right now, there are 676 (26 ^ 2) possibilities for countries, and 246
used codes. I think it's future robust as it is.
mu'o mi'e .leos.
In addition to what Leo said, a three letter code could not use quite
the same algorithm for countries, because of the pecularities of the
gismu "bangu" and "gugde".
For codes that begin with a vowel, a bang- or gugd- prefix are equally usable.
For codes that begin with a consonant however, ban- is much more
effective than gug-, for two reasons: any consonant except "n" can
follow "n", and "nC" is never a permissible initial. After "gug-" a
much more limited set of consonants can follow, and also "gr" and "gl"
are permissible initials, which will cause the leading "gu" to fall
off in most cases. e.g. gugru'usu -> gu gru'usu.
Another advantage that "bangu" has is its "bau" rafsi, which allows us
to use "baur-" as a meaningful prefix when the code starts with "n" or
"g".. For gugde we can use "gu'er-" too, but that means adding one
syllable, and also it would not be just for two consonants but for c,
d, f, g, h, k, l, p, q, r, s, t, x, and we would even have to make an
exception to the exceptions and use "gu'en-" when the code starts with
"r". So, a lot more "exceptional" cases (in fact more than the
non-exceptional ones: b, j, m, n, v, w, y, z).
We were quite lucky with "bangu" and its two rafsi.
I didn't see anyone comment on this (unless they did so in a
different thread), but I don't think Oren understood what Pierre was
saying. "gugde la sy .ebu" isn't grammatical, because "sy. ebu" is a
pro-bridi. When you stick a "la" in front of it, that means "the one
named ____ associated with SE". But since we don't have a cmevla or
selbri following after, the blank is unfilled, and therefore fails
grammatically. (An example might make this clearer: "gugde la sy .ebu
gerku" means "(something is) a country inhabited by SE's Dog" (where
"Dog" here is a name of someone/soemthing, not necessarily a dog,
somehow associated with who-/whatever "SE" is standing in for).
Pierre's objection had no objection to the place that "la sy ebu"
was in (although you are correct Oren, that the place didn't make much
sense). Pierre's corrected version was "a country those named
"SE'ers" which makes more sense.
--gejyspa
My other point is that it doesn't make sense to use "la me <two-letter code>"
for the people of a country or the speakers of a language, since "bangu la me
cy.ybu" is Welsh and "gugde la me cy.ybu" is Cyprus, and the Cypriots
generally don't speak Welsh, so what "la me cy.ybu" means when not preceded
by one of those words is quite unclear.
What kind of facilities should Greeks and Turks have?
Cypriot but equal.
Pierre
--
Don't buy a French car in Holland. It may be a citroen.