Subject: Re: [lojban] on Lojban pronunciation

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 14:04:17 EDT

In a message dated 00-06-22 10:31:21 EDT, aulun writes:

<< the Lojban /x/ was to pronounce like German
'ch' in 'Bach' or Spanish 'jinete' etc.. This for sure is the rule 
defined. (Meanwhile I have changed the audio file.) 
Since in German the pronunciation of the 'ch'-fricative changes from
guttural (Bach=creek, Rache=vengence) to about central-
palatal (ich=I, nicht=not) over somewhat in between (echt=genuine,
schlecht=bad) depending on the accompaning vowel 
respective, I'd - for me - tend to pronounce it different for
/xance/, /xekri/ and /xirma/. 
According to Lojban rules, the different pronunciations for /r/ (and
I think - quite unexpressed and informal - /l/ too) is free for 
personal/national usage. This should be the same with /x/, because
its variations indeed having no *morphemic* functions! 
(French - and maybe Chinese - speaking Lojbanists excluded for
ambiguous /x/=/c/ (French) or /x/=/s/ (pinyin 'x'/W.-G. 
'hs'). 
What is your opinion on this?>>

It is certainly the case that /x/ tends to be pronounced differently in 
different environments and that is OK. It is even the case that it has 
different native language forms (English is often less gutteral, closer to 
/h/, German and Slavic presumably happier with the genuine gutteral 
fricative). What cannot be allowed to happen is that it falls over into the 
area of another Lojban sound, either /c/ or /s/ or whatever is used for /'/ 
(one of the reasons for suggesting theta for /'/). It is ultimately the 
patterning of the sounds, rather than the sounds themselves, that counts (as 
we remarked about transliterating Chinese). If your pattern for /x/ overlaps 
mine for /c/, say, I may have trouble understanding you for a few moments, 
but most of us (hopefully) adjust pretty rapidly, identifying your pattern. 
Maybe we should be sure there is a good vvariety of version up, when we get 
around to the serious job of providing models.

<<BTW, I've been wondering anyway, how a conlang constructed by English
speaking people includes 'rough' sounds like that /x/ 
Don't they show kind of a masochist trait? ;-) >>

No, just a practical one (disguised, as often with JCB, as an empirical 
discovery). We needed another sound, we were misrepresenting a lot of 
language contributions by lacking an /h/-ish sound, we needed a sound that 
would be distinct in usual channels (as ordinary /h/ is not) and, lo, we 
found that most languages had a /x/ but not an actual /h/. And so, /x/ it 
was.