From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Fri Jan 31 07:42:14 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Fri, 31 Jan 92 07:42 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA25071; Fri, 31 Jan 92 07:35:20 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA12254; Fri, 31 Jan 92 06:40:31 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA23716; Fri, 31 Jan 92 06:40:35 EST Message-Id: <9201311140.AA23716@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 3150; Fri, 31 Jan 92 06:38:33 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 5653; Fri, 31 Jan 92 06:38:18 EST Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1992 22:37:57 +1100 Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!nsn Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!nsn Subject: Re: Allophones of zero in Lojban X-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" , lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 30 Jan 92 14:29:20 EST." Status: RO I agree with everything Mark has to say about buffer-"u. Even the long dangly wiggly bits :) (Thelonius P. Wilderbeest, aka Lenny Henry) It would have been nice if "u and y were interchanged. But it would have had its downsides too. {y} is an *extremely* frequent phoneme in the language, and it needs something to sound buffery too. "u wouldn't be it. But then, what would? So regretfully, though And *is right*, I cannot foresee us going ahead with that exchange, and for the same reasons as Mark, would disapprove were it brought up. It is amazing to think how fluid the design of the language still is. But every translation fixes it. I anticipate some of the new place structures (even the ones I may have suggested) will require a lot of unlearning. Nick.