From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Nov 01 14:54:18 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:54:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GfOy8-000676-Bn for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:54:00 -0800 Received: from smtp.mail.umich.edu ([141.211.14.82] helo=hellskitchen.mr.itd.umich.edu) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GfOy2-00066y-MU for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:54:00 -0800 Received: FROM [141.213.221.81] (bursley-221-81.reshall.umich.edu [141.213.221.81]) BY hellskitchen.mr.itd.umich.edu ID 45492545.1710D.7476 ; 1 Nov 2006 17:52:53 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) In-Reply-To: <20061101221257.80868.qmail@web81312.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20061101221257.80868.qmail@web81312.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <6A51EFC6-5232-448A-9662-A0E51BBEDAB2@umich.edu> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Alex Martini Subject: [lojban] Re: Stress of the penultimate syllable Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 17:52:45 -0500 To: lojban-list@lojban.org X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3) X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 12894 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: alexjm@umich.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list >> [ li'o ] >> >> Is thIs tExt EAsier tO rEAd? I thInk nOt, becAUse yOU cannOt rEAd >> It At A >> nOrmal pAce bUt hAve to slOw dOwn. (It Also lOOks prEtty Ugly.) >> >> that's the line I was refering to with the Wikipedia comment. If >> you are >> truly fluent in lOjban then you should have no difficulty >> understanding all >> its forms. >> > These caps are not exactly random, but pointless since most of the > words are one syllable and a > few of them are virtually accentless by nature. > No difficulty is a matter of taste: I take it that the point is > that having to shift from Gestalt > reading to letter reading is considered a difficulty in this context. ki'e John - that's a pretty good summary of what I was trying to express. And, yes this is admittedly a rather poor sample of accented English as there are so many monosyllables. But as for fluency in Lojban... If I were fluent in Lojban then I would read it with more speed than I do now. The sort of speed I use to read English. The sort of speed that involves looking at *groups* of letters all at once. So the extra caps would make it more difficult to read, not less. I think the main issue here is learning. I'm going to consider a hypothetical lojbanic beginner. As a beginner in a language, they have the tendency to do thing that make it easy (easier) for them. To the beginner, especially the beginner who only know English, the caps on every syllable might be helpful until they internalize the pattern of stress. After all, the stress rule in Lojban is different from the stress rules in English. For comparison, it reminds me a little of when I was learning to read Pinyin (a romanization of Mandarin Chinese). In Mandarin, words have tone, and the tone can change based on the words around it. So, in the beginning, we marked every tone as it was pronounced. As we got to know the language, we marked the tones as the words would be in isolation, because we internalized the tone change rules. We stopped marking what was already predictable from the rules of pronunciation. Perhaps in a primer for Lojban, marking every word has value. (Although, in that case, I would prefer the look of the grave-accent method xorxes mentioned.) However, in normal Lojban, I don't see any value to marking what is already regular and 100% predictable. mu'omi'e aleks To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.