Re: Transliteration

[Claudio Gnoli <CTGNOLI@IMICILEA.CILEA.IT>]

Some days ago, John Cowan wrote:

> Claudio Gnoli scripsit:
> > I really would LIKE names were accurately transliterated in Liva.
> > However, the phonotactical rules are very strict, in order
> > to make word boundaries unambiguous. So, what to do?
> > One hypothesis is making names to violate the rules, and
> > be preceded by  a "name marker" which itself violate the
> > rules. It should mean "from here, the phonotactical rules
> > temporarily don't count".
> > (Hey, why I didn't yet find it in Lojban?! :-) )
>
> Oh, it's there.

*thump*

>                "la'o (any word) (pause) (anything at all)
> (pause) (the same word)" is a valid Lojban name:
>
>       la'o doitc. Johann Wilhelm von Goethe .doitc.
>
> (dots represent pauses) is an example.  The inclusion need not
> even be spoken words: whistles, hiccups, or drum-talk are perfectly
> acceptable.  As long as the delimiter word doesn't appear in the
> inclusion, all is well.

Well, once again, a very good solution from Lojban.
I decidedly have to spend more time learning it.

I guess this device leave only a little question unsolved:
suppose you have to quote a German string cointaining itself
the word "Deutsch": in spoken language this could be interpreted as
the delimiter word "doitc", while it is not.
(I admit this is not a very common case. I'm interested with how
to deal with it just to satisfying my logical curiosity.)
But... I would not bet any shilling Lojban has not a solution
also for this! ;-)

I suppose one Lojban solution is the use of the pause.
Pause is generally not a phoneme in natlangs, so it is unlike
to find it within the "foreign" string -- unless it is a drum-
talk, of course!
Pause seems to work like a sort of "meta-phoneme" here, doesn'it it?

Perhaps you might find appropriate to shift this discussion
to the Lojban list.

>                  e'osai ko sarji la lojban

Ok, ok, you are convincing me :-) .

Claudio /.