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Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Are Natlang the best case for entropy in
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> I believe that most Chinese words sound the same for an ordinary English
> speaker because the latter is just not used to it's phonology.
> But still Chinese is the language with which you can send people to outer
> space. Does it mean that this language is bad?


No, you miss the point.

The problem is not with pronounciation in itself but with *phonemes*.

Phonemes are defined as smallest units of phonological type that carry
meaning in a double segmentation scheme.

That is, /b/ and /p/ are english phonemes, not because they're not the
same sounds, but because there is a pair of words such as "bit" /
"pit", and thus it is wise to consider an opposition between them.

But in other languages, such as chinese, b and p are not distinct phonemes.

Which is no probleme, because Chinese has other meaningful opposition
pairs, such as "plosive" vs "mute", or "nasalized" versus "no-nasal"

.

And thus, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ /u/ are phonemes in lojban in the
contradistinction set of so'V

But different words with opposite meanings IN THE SAME PARADIGME
differ form only one phoneme, which is not wise

---

(Also, "a lot", "few", "all" and "none" do not differ only from one
feature in Chinese...  but from a lot a differente phonological
feature.  We don't care if "all" and "horse" are very near.  But we
care this be the case for "all" and "none" !!!)

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