Re: New strings in GDM

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Hi Hasbullah,

Hasbullah Bin Pit <sebol@my-penguin.org> writes:

> I always have problem translating language name
> some language name has malay translation, but the rest don't.
>
> we have "Jerman" for "German" , "Belanda" for "Dutch"
> may be beacuse of old history, or old relationship, that term existed.
> but for Ukranian, Latvian, Jekavian etc, there is no Malay Translation
> for it.

That's why I described the pronounciation of word "Jekavian" -- most
languages transcribe those names which they don't already translate. 
Btw, this is *Serbian* language in Jekavian dialect (or pronounciation), 
not a language by itself.

> Maybe other language have the same problem.
> How do you guy translate "Malay"?

That's the job for official language institute to declare official
names of the different languages.  Generally though, Serbian uses the
form of <name-of-country/nation> in genitive (that's the case with the
name of most languages, with a couple of exceptions).

Since Serbian has phonetic script, we write the name down how we
pronounce it.  Of course, there's a lot more variety with those
nations we've been traditionally in contact with (eg. we call
Hungarian "mađarski", which is based on how Hungarians call
themselves: "Magyar", because they're our first neighbour; or we call 
German "nemački", and there're some funny anecdotes as to how that
came to be :).

On the particular case of "Malay", it's built according to exactly the
same principle: "malajski".  Most of these words are actually
available in English–Serbian dictionary, so no problem with that.

There are problems only with very obscure languages, when I turn to
phonetic transcription.

> I'm thingking of a solution that might help every language that doesnt
> has complete list of Language name.

I don't think there's any other help apart from having them establish
a standard set of translations for language names.  ISO 639
translation domain inside TP is a good place to start with that.

> Language name in english normally have *an, *ian, *ish etc.
> normally, language name derive from Race/ethic  or country or region.
> Can we can a list of how the *an, *ian, *ish came from?
> Jekavian is from Jekav or Jekavi ?

You asked for the explanation, so you get it now :P
[to the best of my knowledge, at least]

Jekavian is based on the variety in pronounciation.  Prior (and
during) to 19th century, Serbian was written with a different
alphabet (not reformed-Cyrillic based, but old-slavic script).  One
letter in that alphabet was "yat" which was pronounced differently
among different people: some pronounced it like "e" (as in "bed"),
and they're now "Ekavian" (official Serbian); others pronounced it as
"je" (as "ye" in "yeah") or "ee-ye" (as in "ee-yeah" ;), and they're
"Jekavian"; others still pronounced it as "i" (as "ee" in "beep") and
they're "Ikavian" (this is not among Serbian-speaking fellows, but
rather among Croatians I think).  There are other linguistic
differences which do not concern with the letter "yat", and they have
names like "Chakavian", "Shtokavian", etc.  I don't know where
"kavian" came from, but it's probably old Slavic word or something.
The start of the word says about specific dialect features.  These
others are independent of E/Je/I-kavian, so one can have Shtokavian
Jekavian, and Shtokavian Ekavian ;)

With Serbian now using phonetic alphabet, it's hard to tell when one
should use what in other dialect than one's own.  So, while I can
understand Jekavian, I cannot write it completely correctly.

Cheers,
Danilo