From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jun 02 07:12:21 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MBUiy-0004BY-9P for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:21 -0700 Received: from mail-qy0-f117.google.com ([209.85.221.117]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MBUis-0004AQ-3w for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:19 -0700 Received: by qyk15 with SMTP id 15so474991qyk.28 for ; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:07 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=u47fQrb0u0LV4aDo0jnLRsNfFiSvccqAJFyGSM+iAyM=; b=BiIrhO/WbqMr4mh5Z1nOsdokzTC3P37MqeiJ8vlixpD1aE2q7OTuAxeqObnCM0pkMm vqRPfQJ8BVqzeuKyjW/sKQzAxDS9/iM1k7/967CFeX76cXxS7jlQfNgGlVoglmbHNT4K ybwTmKJpMobejWvqOIX74q/fPESHnkZVG/JGA= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=JoClxOXBmPDJRiWtQmh3hXZD24bpZpC39Cyiq8I3GAPkyz7ru+24D90PuvVH7zhY+o KCxDVU7lxcbIXfwt2BnNJ4xBZL9gKnOFZk2C5+xXx96Mdn1X8JlVFDJt+paO+h8uCsK1 SCIjvS4Q6CVU7pXFIKTS8QKbGRBqQDPRZFyjY= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.229.110.5 with SMTP id l5mr2021942qcp.88.1243951926962; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:06 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <8900cc410906010103p1d2721e4rcdf94369983d19e3@mail.gmail.com> References: <73982fe70905311909ke27958eo20e9a882a88ad4c3@mail.gmail.com> <8900cc410906010103p1d2721e4rcdf94369983d19e3@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:12:06 -0300 Message-ID: <73982fe70906020712h236e8c5rf43c18ca4474b19e@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Pronunciation: a major problem in spreading lojban From: Leonardo Castro To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-archive-position: 1738 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: leolucas1980@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners > I would note that Japanese pays its price for having such a simple > phonetics: tremendous amount of allophones in one part of vocabulary > (especially e.g. kango), and long words in another part. In fact, you can form much more words following the pattern "CCVCV" than "CVVCV", so the lojban system is more economic. But I would also say that the price Lojban pays for having short words is having most of his speakers around the world being linguists and other smart professionals. > Also, I think that languages (almost) without consonant clusters are rather > rare. The only famous examples I know, are Japanese and Chinese (are there If you consider semivowels and nasals as consonants, Japanese does have some consonant clusters. And I guess "consonant clusters" can occur in Chinese when two subsequent words are pronounced fast: "tong shi". Languages with none or few simple consonant clusters include Maori, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Swahili (and most bantu languages), practically every language of the Tupi family, etc. Almost every language admits less consonant clusters than those of the German and Slavic language families (English is included). But having consonant clusters in your mother tongue doesn't make you able to pronounce the consonant clusters of other languages: the cluster /skl/ is quite simple to pronounce for many people, but anglophones don't pronounce it in "muscle". Besides, many languages have phonemes which may look or sound as consonant encounters for non-native speakers, but they are rather single phonemes, for instance, "gb" in yoruba, "tl" in nahuatl and "mb" in many languages. > any examples in Europe?). But, as I can judge from my experience with native Indo-european languages have a particularly high occurrence of consonant clusters, but it lacks other common features used to distinguish words in other languages, such as tone. Imagine a tonal loglan... > Chinese speakers, the most serious problem for them is not consonant > clusters, but voiced consonants, like b, d, g. The students from China, > learning here, in Russia, are getting to pronounce consonant clusters quite > fast, but even those of them who speak almost fluent, pronounce voiced > consonants incorrectly. I guess that realizing the contrast between voiced and unvoiced consonants for them is as difficult as getting used with the contrast aspirated/unaspirated (of Arabic, for instance) for most speakers of European languages. Probably that's why Toki Pona does not include voiced consonants. 2009/6/1 Dmitry Shintyakov : > > > 2009/6/1 Leonardo Castro >> >> Hi, folks! >> >> I wonder why the patterns of basic lojban words were not chosen to be >> "CVVCV" and "CVCVV" instead of "CCVCV" and "CVCCV" (I would also add >> "CVNCV" and "CVVV" to the list). >> >> Anglophones are relatively well accustomed to consonant clusters, but > > >> >> In my opinion, an auxlang should be no more complicated than Toki Pona: >> > a'u Everybody cares about Japanese sou much. Let them judge for themselves. > > I would note that Japanese pays its price for having such a simple > phonetics: tremendous amount of allophones in one part of vocabulary > (especially e.g. kango), and long words in another part. > > Also, I think that languages (almost) without consonant clusters are rather > rare. The only famous examples I know, are Japanese and Chinese (are there > any examples in Europe?). But, as I can judge from my experience with native > Chinese speakers, the most serious problem for them is not consonant > clusters, but voiced consonants, like b, d, g. The students from China, > learning here, in Russia, are getting to pronounce consonant clusters quite > fast, but even those of them who speak almost fluent, pronounce voiced > consonants incorrectly. > > Also, Lojban is not an auxlang, and simplicity was not its main goal. >