Return-Path: Message-Id: <9108281639.AA23631@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Wed Aug 28 16:00:04 1991 Reply-To: Lojban list Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Second resend. Double apologies if triplicate. trying listserver X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann , Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Aug 28 16:00:04 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Subject: 'th' and phonemes Thanks, Bob, for your article on the difference between phones and phonemes (argh, but that commercial makes me wanna strangle someone. Not that they call 'em "phonics," but that they claim, "one you learn them [the 44 "phonics"], you can read and spell almost everything!" In what language? Certainly NOT English!) Introducing 'h' for the 'th' sound would be silly. Lojban does not include that sound as a phoneme in its stock (and for good reason; it's not a common sound in the world's languages). I'm not positive I'd accept /th/ as a phone included in 't', but that's just me. I would more likely consider it to be just plain outside the language, like the Arabic pharyngeal (despite its common transliteration as 'x'). Remember our nifty new name feature: if all else fails, there's {la'o}. I certainly would not support calling in the capital letters for more phonemes; that just asks for a HUGE and totally a priori alphabet with no memory hooks. Not pretty. Ask me about the extra-alphabetical symbols in Schleyer's Volap\"uk one day. In fact, I would actually like to see the use of capitals for *all* required stress in lojban, thus making spaces optional (if our word-resolving algorithm really works), if indispensible for human sanity. Also, since stress is considered significant in Lojban, it would be an extension (albeit not a necessary one) to the audio-visual correspondence. There are a zillion sounds that we could wind up adding to the Lojban alphabet if we wanted to include everything. If we did, we wouldn't have Lojban, we'd have IPA. ~mark