From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu May 24 00:18:17 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hr7aS-0001mj-NJ for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:17 -0700 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.241]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Hr7aQ-0001mc-0O for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:16 -0700 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id b21so9229ana for ; Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:12 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=hPGzfQ1tBAoIT91Np57s2KHqQU5vyYL9uMoWBuVv7Ho0rZjcF3T3odCu52EMiXesczRwXzi1mbQ7EzXCKt9w2iMfHGj3HNl2CMaoMCiy9LdLEavROdzYHiWqByOzztDAV1eX2WiHlzgs49BTs2bJ1fIZcAWjHfryxRf03qLgEw0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=T+LAxecC7mL1+ohKp6IXWNaeNIzg135t20eKUXF3m/am4lvmDlCERQ0b5PrMDcrOuS3KeBKpxJAcg8padfJZksj+1VMg5pBSXZNpm9hEh5EMXHDekESngYwPt1o+XLlUd1uCpvogPvXnNpnDgvlYUuE1PyVv68coTsO8FNqIsWw= Received: by 10.100.110.16 with SMTP id i16mr1275106anc.1179991092446; Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.100.174.8 with HTTP; Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:12 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <537d06d00705240018i62104fal8a905e36286736a8@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 09:18:12 +0200 From: "Philip Newton" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: lojbanization In-Reply-To: <2f91285f0705230854s4b2cb0cl5e1f78454782267d@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <2f91285f0705230545h102beb4q6548c42b932bf299@mail.gmail.com> <537d06d00705230748m3663c21cyd795cb06767bbedd@mail.gmail.com> <2f91285f0705230854s4b2cb0cl5e1f78454782267d@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4637 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: philip.newton@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On 5/23/07, Vid Sintef wrote: > > Hasn't Lojban been designed to be as culturally neutral as possible? Let's imagine it has, then I think that part of this goal is to have a comparatively small phoneme inventory, because including every sound that is in use as a distinct phoneme in at least one language would result in a phoneme inventory so large that it would hardly be culturally neutral! However, having a small phoneme inventory also means that you cannot unambiguously represent a word from another language exactly as that language pronounces it. It's possible to have a range of allophones (for example, Lojban /r/ is "any rhotic consonant" IIRC, not limited to e.g. American retroflex r or Spanish trilled r or German rasped r), but you can't force a particular allophonic pronunciation (for example, you can't even specify whether apostrophe is to be pronounced as English "h" in "hand" or English "th" in "thank" -- if you write {.e'Eminueis.}, someone could validly pronounce it "Etheminwayce"). > I do really love Lojban; but I would have loved it more if there were other > options than {XEminueis.} or {.e'Eminueis.} for the name "Hemingway", > for instance. I, on the other hand, am glad that I don't need to learn tones (as in Chinese), pharyngealised consonants (as in Arabic), or unaspirated voiceless dental stops (as in Spanish) in order to pronounce Lojban properly. Cheers, -- Philip Newton