Return-Path: Message-Id: <9109042140.AA12165@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Wed Sep 4 17:48:58 1991 Reply-To: Lojban list Sender: Lojban list From: "@morocco.eng [Doug Landauer]" Subject: Re: 'th' and phonemes X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann , Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Sep 4 17:48:58 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN > Introducing 'h' for the 'th' sound would be silly. [ ... ] 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 ... Here's another small bit of info that argues against including /th/ in Lojban: Some dialects of English use /f/ or /v/ wherever most of us use the voiced or unvoiced /th/ sounds. (Anyone remember the "Mother's Lament", from an ancient Cream album (Disraeli Gears, I think)?) > 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. Nah, we'd end up with the language that Heinlein described in his short story "Gulf". (I think it was called something like "Speedtalk".) -- Doug Landauer -- landauer@eng.sun.com _ Sun Microsystems, Inc. -- STE, SunPro, Languages La no ka 'oi.