From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Apr 03 01:58:26 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LpfEG-00072l-V7 for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:26 -0700 Received: from mail-ew0-f163.google.com ([209.85.219.163]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LpfE9-00071t-JP for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:24 -0700 Received: by ewy7 with SMTP id 7so794081ewy.34 for ; Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:07 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=lzA8hhYRsph1HIuvuz27Au6Fqjd8V3UxCnyhn/fe6XY=; b=ngbmzVirFGOCNncFZnkSwDUCP8k4D7uNd0jCV7NNW3UPpgoKlXfv13QjH1xL2p7/Av bttCayhg6G1HVCC7KytCw9XJpCoSAhI0uVle8zBI6saH+i+KJ9axgvZV5u0MNN+lQB0+ b6FLsCDD2rGpTqsEBmHtB/X3FK5lgRblbDwHw= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=JGsed2uIF+e0/Ksuik7V8qGXsYhFJywWT0lM00mW0YXfiDCy6zVTryBnJR9y4DToQC y1In6c3UPPLvRGXEBO8c2mv8MZ/um+DSPUuEMqZ5ZzWj7lCIREVgRJB5VuIBDvBcEdNA WqyL2gFcMJuSdP1QvkOe8mIox7MECMJHjg41w= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.37.1 with SMTP id x1mr316652wea.226.1238749087606; Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:07 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 10:58:07 +0200 Message-ID: <4de8c3930904030158s6901f5f5qb17b057933ee348@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Long consonants & long vowels From: tijlan To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 1472 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: pascal.akihiko@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Does Lojban allow for geminate consonants ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminate )? For example: meggy ('sour cherry' in Hungarian) kukka ('flower' in Finnish) rappa ('trumpet' in Japanese) These would traditionally be lojbanized as "meg", "kuka", and "rapa" respectively, given that "gg", "kk", and "pp" are not permissible. But gemination, basically pronouncing consonants long, is phonetically different from such clusters where each consonant is pronounced individually. Any thoughts on this? I have a rather experimental idea. In linguistics, there is a way to transcribe "kukka", for instance, with the IPA length sign [ː], giving [kukːa]. The sign is fairly similar to colon (:), which has currently no official use in Lojban but is still covered by ASCII. So why not lojbanizing geminate consonants with colon? The above examples would become: "meg:", "kuk:a", "rap:a". By the same principle, we would be able to lojbanize long vowels ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length ): ház [haːz] ("house" in Hungarian) --> xa:z maa [maː] ("earth" in Finnish) --> ma: tōkyō [toːkjoː] ("Tokyo" in Japanese) --> to:kio: oris [oːriːs] ("mouth" in Latin) --> o:ri:s mu'o mi'e tijlan