From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Oct 25 14:53:14 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:53:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IlAdd-00065s-9s for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:53:13 -0700 Received: from eastrmmtao103.cox.net ([68.230.240.9]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IlAdZ-00065Z-QA for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:53:12 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by eastrmmtao103.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20071025215303.GVNJ1422.eastrmmtao103.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:53:03 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id 4lsv1Y00j3y5FKc0000000; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:52:57 -0400 Message-ID: <47211028.8040500@lojban.org> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:52:40 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: ''''''''''' References: <2204fa080710251408l73265a1fh42569c30289e406e@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2204fa080710251408l73265a1fh42569c30289e406e@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5651 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Jared Angell wrote: > Why was ' chosen instead of h? since h is left out but it's in the > middle of the keyboard (even in Russian) this bothers me as a bad and > annoying choice as the ' seems counterintuitive to anyone accustomed to > the romantic character set and keyboard. Perhaps there are Spanish and > French keyboards which readily have ' but lack h???? > > This irritates me something fierce so I'd like to hear the logic behind > it if anyone knows. h is a consonant in all languages that have the letter. In Lojban, at least in theory, it is NOT defined as a consonant, but a solution to the problem of vowel glides when two vowels are adjacent. Thinking of the orthography as representing the sound-stream: If a close-comma appears between the two vowels, then there is a voiced glide. If an apostrophe appears, then it is a devoiced glide. If a period appears, there is a glottal stop (and it separates into two words), and if none of these appear, the vowels form a diphthong. English speakers (and those of many other languages) often hear a devoiced glide as an "h", and more importantly, they tend speak a devoiced glide as an "h" as the default. In theory, you could use a different devoiced sound (as long as it isn't one of the other unvoiced consonants of Lojban, or a glottal stop), and some have used a devoiced "th" which of course makes a lojbanist sound like like they have a funny lithp. The apostrophe does not count as a consonant or a vowel in any of the Lojban word-formation rules, which rely on consonant and vowel patterns. If it were an h, we would probably have great difficulty keeping this clear. lojbab