From mikevdg@gulik.co.nz Fri Jan 21 15:40:10 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:40:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from genamics.blastula.net ([205.214.85.184]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.34) id 1Cs8Nu-0001lf-1N for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:40:10 -0800 Received: from [203.184.8.94] (helo=gulik.co.nz) by genamics.blastula.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.43) id 1Cs8No-0002bL-Gt for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Sat, 22 Jan 2005 12:40:05 +1300 Message-ID: <41F162BE.5040307@gulik.co.nz> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:14:54 +1300 From: Michael van der Gulik User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040216 Debian/1.6.x.1-10 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: apostrophes? References: <41EEFA48.7020900@gulik.co.nz> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - genamics.blastula.net X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - chain.digitalkingdom.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - gulik.co.nz X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: X-archive-position: 1048 X-Approved-By: mikevdg@gulik.co.nz X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: mikevdg@gulik.co.nz Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners Raphaël Poss wrote: > > Le 20 janv. 05, à 01:24, Michael van der Gulik a écrit : > >> Why does Lojban use apostrophes instead of "h"'s? It seems much more >> natural to use "h"'s, as it keeps words together (consider that an >> apo'stro'phe ins'er'ts sp'ac'es i'n'to wo'rds, breaking them up and >> making them harder to read as one word). >> >> Is it acceptable to use, e.g. "keha" instead of "ke'a"? Or will >> people become angry? > > > Hmm... I'd rather write "ke·a", "ke¨a", "ke°a" or even "ke:a" to keep > it ASCII. > > a co:lon do:es not ins:er:t sp:ac:es i:n:to wo:rds... at least not too > much :) > How about "keá"? Just like the double-dots in Raphaël :-). (okay, its a bad idea because 1: that's pronounced differently (keeaa rather than keha) and 2: its not 7-bit ASCII). My biggest problem with the apostrophe is that the typography looks really bad, especially in fixed-width fonts (try reading lojban in a fixed-width font! Yuck). Variable-width fonts and proper typesetting look much better, but cmavo still look like they have a gaping hole in them. Are these assumptions correct: * the <<'>> isn't a consonant but is used to separate consecutive vowels from each other. * "h" isn't used because it is a consonant in the latin alphabet. * The cmavo are always V, VV, CV or CVV. Adding an "h" would make it complicated unless "h" was marked as an exception (or a different typographical convention for a <<'>>, which would confuse everybody). Mikevdg.