From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Jan 16 23:58:02 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:58:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JFPdQ-0006mN-Bm for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:58:01 -0800 Received: from michael.checkpoint.com ([194.29.32.68]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JFPdJ-0006m1-PT for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:58:00 -0800 Received: from MBP.checkpoint.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by michael.checkpoint.com (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.10) with ESMTP id m0H7vsP8011769 for ; Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:57:54 +0200 (IST) Message-Id: From: Yoav Nir To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <454EB6BD-01C3-4A48-83C4-371616030F98@umich.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: cmevla-final apostrophe Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:56:49 +0200 References: <2f91285f0801160353m205ab989u5dfbc58f51a4e39b@mail.gmail.com> <478DF125.8050206@gmail.com> <2f91285f0801160626j58c41c08h4195a66da41047aa@mail.gmail.com> <454EB6BD-01C3-4A48-83C4-371616030F98@umich.edu> X-Spam-Score: 1.2 X-Spam-Score-Int: 12 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 268 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: yoav.nir@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Jan 17, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Alex Martini wrote: > > Both of the above are essentially correct. y'y (the apostrophe > letter) is pronounced as a consonant by most speakers. And it is a > special sound in Lojban. > > Let's pull out the long linguistics words now. Phonotactics: the > allowed sound combinations in a given language. For example, English > would allow the nonsense word "feep" and "lek", but not "pferd" or > "rmla". As a speaker of English, the rules for allowed sounds and > clusters etc is subconscious. > > In Lojban, these rules are actually written out. The y'y is only > allowed *between vowels*. This is part of the phonotactics of > Lojban. There are other things, such as disallowed consonant pairs > as well. (I think "sv" is an example). Sure it might be useful to > have y'y in other places, but we can't because of how Lojban is > defined. I should try to dig up where in CLL the phonotactic rules > are set out. I'd guess in the chapter titled "The Hills are Alive > with the Sounds of Lojban"... > > Going back to English, think of the 'h' and 'ng' sounds. The 'h' > can't come anywhere but the start of a syllable, and almost always > the start of a word. And opposite for 'ng' -- only the end of a > syllable. Why can't you have words pronounced like like "nga" or > "mih" in English? Because the phonotactics don't allow it. So it's > not really that strange that Lojban has sounds which are only > allowed in certain positions either. And yet, if my name was Pferd or Nga, That's how I would spell it in English, and English-speakers would do their best to pronounce it (and fail miserably - I've heard all kinds of weird variations of my own name when I was is the US) There are after all people in the US with names like Pfeifer and Nguyen. There's good reason to set aside phonotactics rules for names. I agree that this has no place in cmavo or selbri, but in names I think the restrictions should be fewer. mi'e ioav