Return-Path: Message-Id: Fri, 10 May 91 17:46:04 -0400 (EDT) Fri, 10 May 91 17:45:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 17:45:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "Daniel S. Efran" To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Subject: Final vowels Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri May 10 19:19:54 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!andrew.cmu.edu!de0t+ Chip Salzenberg says: So if no gismu like "bridV" other than "bridi" can be created, then why not have all gismu end with the same vowell, say "o", thus freeing up "CVVCa", "CVVCe", etc. for other uses? As I'm sure 6 or 7 people will tell Chip, the reason not to use more than one vowel for any CVCC/CCVC (whether for bridi or for 'other uses') is to reduce the chance of mishearing or mislearning a word, and in general to keep things reasonably simple. (Some of those 6 or 7 people will be more precise in their phrasing.) Still, why *not* make them all the same vowel? This would make the language quite a bit easier to learn (the vocabulary anyway)...and I don't see how it would cause any problems, unless it was with words with similar consonants (for example, pretend that in addition to {karce} we had {karse} or {karke}) In those cases we could change the final vowel to help, though really it's the speaker's problem to pronounce them correctly. It plays hell with the word-generation rules (Many words' scores go down) but the loss in ease-of-learning from having fewer cognates would be more than made up for by the ease-of-learning *gain* of having all those vowels the same. I don't expect this to happen, but will someone please tell me why it's a bad idea so I won't feel so bad when it doesn't get done? co'o ---la deniel