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Names for Latin letters and Arabic digits

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:48 pm
by janTe
There are times when the use of Latin letters or Arabic digits are unavoidable, like when you're trying to say you live at "221B". I was wondering how we would say these in Toki Pona.

A E I O U can be said as sitelen A, sitelen E, sitelen I, sitelen O, sitelen U.
P T K S M N L J W can be sitelen Pa, sitelen Ta, sitelen Ka, and so on.
Maybe B D G Z can sitelen Pa Pimeja (Dark P), sitelen Ta Pimeja (Dark T), etc. V can be sitelin Wa Pimeja.

For the others, I'm having trouble. That leaves C F H Q R X Y.

C - sitelin Sa Sike (round S) or sitelin Ka Sike (round K)?
F - sitelin Pa Walo (light P)?
H - sitelin Ka Walo (light K)?
Q - ???
R - sitelin La Pimeja?
X - ???
Y - sitelin I Elena?

Or maybe this is completely the wrong way to do it. Maybe we should approximate the Latin names: A, Be, Ke, Te, E, Epa, Ke, Ka, I, (they had no J), Ka, Ela, Ema, Ena, O, Pe, Ku, Ela, Esa, Te, U, (They had no V or W), Ekasa, I Elena, Seta.

The problem is, we have two Te's, two Ke's, two Ka's, and two Ela's. And no words for J, V, or W.

Or maybe we should use the English radio alphabet? Take Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and turn it into Alpa, Barabo, Karli, Telata?

Any other ideas?

For the Arabic digits, I'm thinking we can take the names from Esperanto. sitelin Unu, sitelin Du, sitelin Turi, sitelin Kuwara, sitelin Kuwin, sitelin Sesa, sitelin Sepa, sitelin Oka, sitelin Nawa.

I'm not suggesting we use these for counting, which is why I used "sitelin" rather than "nanpa".

Re: Names for Latin letters and Arabic digits

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:35 pm
by janMato
janTe wrote:There are times when the use of Latin letters or Arabic digits are unavoidable,...
Or maybe this is completely the wrong way to do it. Maybe we should approximate the Latin names: A, Be, Ke, Te, E, Epa, Ke, Ka, I, (they had no J), Ka, Ela, Ema, Ena, O, Pe, Ku, Ela, Esa, Te, U, (They had no V or W), Ekasa, I Elena, Seta.
Regardless to the merits, if you bring a non-tp word into tp, it has to be capitalized, has to modify something and is supposed to be transliterated and follow the toki pona phonotactics, something I hope I'll have time to re-study because the rules have changed since last time I was paying attention (in 2007).

e.g. mi moku e kili Panana (banana) pi nimi Inli. Would be a highly purist sort of loan word I've seen jan Kipo recommend something like this.
janTe wrote:Or maybe we should use the English radio alphabet? Take Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and turn it into Alpa, Barabo, Karli, Telata?
I've previous posted a similar proposal, but without the loan words. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1239
janTe wrote:For the Arabic digits, I'm thinking we can take the names from Esperanto. sitelin Unu, sitelin Du, sitelin Turi, sitelin Kuwara, sitelin Kuwin, sitelin Sesa, sitelin Sepa, sitelin Oka, sitelin Nawa.
There is nothing that can't be fixed in TP by adding 1000 (or 10000) words to it. As soon as we do that, then toki pona isn't a language of mostly transparent compound words (err noun phrases), that can be written and understood (sort-of) after memorizing 117 (err 123) words.

Loan words also brings up a sticky question of who to borrow from. The pattern with place names is to find out how the native say it, then transliterate. For non-place names, no matter what you choose you're screwed--some language will be favored over another--and will be stuck in the same arguments the auxiliary language folk have been having for the last century. I guess if I had to use loan words at gun point, I'd try to pick them from the source languages Sonja lists at the same frequency as the base 123 words, so more English, French and Finnish than Chinese or Lakota.
janTe wrote:Any other ideas?
Here is a purist approach (and very, very verbose) sometimes using the Phonecian alphabet for inspiration.

a - sitelen pi lawa soweli (A is the phonecian picture of a ox head)
e- sitelen pi tu wan ante (Backwards 3)
i - sitelen pi linja lili kepeken sike lili
j - sitelen pi lija lili kepeken luka
k - sitelen pi luka lili
l - sitelen pi linja lili
m - sitelen pi tu wan anpa (Downward 3)
sitelen pi telo lili (little water, phonecian)
n - sitelen pi kala lili (little fish, phonecian)
o - sitelen pi sike lili
sitelen pi oko lili (little eye, phonecian)
p - sitelen pi sike lili kepeken linja
s - sitelen pi akesi linja (picture of a snake)
t - sitelen pi linja kepeken linja lon lawa (line with a line through it's head)
u - sitelen pi kali lili anpa (unside down little fish)
w - sitelen pi telo lili anpa (upside down m)

o kute e mi? mi li jan Mato: sitelen pi telo lili, sitelen pi lawa soweli, sitelen pi linja kepeken linja lon lawa, sitelen pi oko lili.

Re: Names for Latin letters and Arabic digits

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 10:14 pm
by janTe
janMato wrote:
janTe wrote:Or maybe we should use the English radio alphabet? Take Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and turn it into Alpa, Barabo, Karli, Telata?
I've previous posted a similar proposal, but without the loan words. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1239
I quite like the military radio alphabet you propose, but right now, I'm specifically wondering how I would describe Latin letters that are not in the Toki Pona alphabet. Like B.

Obviously, such letters should be treated as a foreign borrowing (just as we'd treat Greek letters as a foreign borrowing). Since the original language for these letters is Latin, I think the proper Toki Pona way is to take the Latin names (A, Be, Ke, De, Ef, Ge, Ha, I, Ka...), tokiponise the names, capitalise them, and use them as modifiers. The problem is, some letters end up having the same name. (T/D, L/R).

With the European ("Arabic") numerals, there's the problem that it's hard to define what the source language is. (Brahmi?) That's why I suggested Esperanto. I'm open to other ideas.

I'm not suggesting at all that these be part of the TP language. But as common cases, it would be nice to have some kind of official guideline on how to treat them.

Re: Names for Latin letters and Arabic digits

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:30 am
by janMato
janTe wrote:I quite like the military radio alphabet you propose, but right now, I'm specifically wondering how I would describe Latin letters that are not in the Toki Pona alphabet. Like B.
"sitelen Inli sama nena mama" comes to mind first.

nimi "Barbara" li open kepeken sitelen Inli sama nena mama. Yeah, I'm not sure if a prepositional phrase can "modify" a word in a previous prepositional phrase.

I'm trying to imagine what an English text book for toki ponans might look like. I suspect they'd use both languages, polyglossia.

toki Inli li jo e kalama lili ni: A, B, C, D.. etc.
janTe wrote:The problem is, some letters end up having the same name. (T/D, L/R).
Which is why we have the IPA (International Phonetics Association) alphabet. Even English doesn't have in its phonetic inventory enough sounds to cover all the possible consonants.

B = Voiced bilabial plosive. kalama pi toki wawa pi ilo tu pi uta sinpin pi kon wawa. Or something like that.
janTe wrote:With the European ("Arabic") numerals, there's the problem that it's hard to define what the source language is. (Brahmi?) That's why I suggested Esperanto. I'm open to other ideas.
Many languages make the unfair assumption that you know if a word is a loan word or not. For example, Japanese uses a different alphabet for words of foreign origin and Russian refused to inflect some words of foreign origin. How the hell are they to know where a word came from? Toki pona, in a way does the same thing. If you were to learn toki pona entirely from overheard conversations, you'd have to infer that proper nouns are in a class of their own on account of being foreign words.
janTe wrote:I'm not suggesting at all that these be part of the TP language.
Feel free to make suggestions, and don't pay much attention to the purists (including me) they're a bunch of killjoys :-) The line between doing something unexpected in toki pona and engaging in language redesign is very fuzzy.
janTe wrote:...it would be nice to have some kind of official guideline on how to treat them.
Official is what jan Sonja says. Everything else is proposals.

Well, let's see here. In English, you can incorporate any mot étranger as long as you write it in italics. I've already mentioned Japanese, where you gotta use kata kana. I tend to write stuff I can't or won't transliterate in double quotes, but that convention may be isolated to mine own skull.

tenpo lili la o toki kepeken toki pona kepeken mots étrangers.