From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Tue Feb 11 22:37:34 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Tue, 11 Feb 92 22:37 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA29869; Tue, 11 Feb 92 20:36:13 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA15837; Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:50:00 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA25503; Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:50:04 EST Message-Id: <9202112350.AA25503@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 3281; Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:48:39 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 9046; Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:48:21 EST Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1992 18:46:51 EST Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Unofficial alphabet lists for Lojban/Latin/English, Greek, and Russian X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Tue, 11 Feb 1992 14:08:13 EST Status: RO I dunno. Some of those seem kind of arbitrary. I guess they have to be. I suppose there'd be no ambiguity between lojban '=y'ybu and English/Latin h=y'ybu? What about English apostrophe? Maybe {srana bu} as in possession, or {tordu bu} for contraction? Would that conflict with something for breve? That'd likely be a nonce-word anyway. Why not {.uybu} for "w"? Will there be some conflict with Cyrillic {.iebu} for "ye" or {.iobu} for "yo"? I mean, we use {.uibu} or {zo'obu} for smileyface, maybe {.iobu} would be taken as some symbol of agreement. Is {cybubu} really even a valid lerfu? BTW, don't all the "xybu" lerfu really need to be "xy.bu", to avoid getting taken for consonant cluters or something? Especially when in mid-sentence. For the Hebrew Alphabet, do you want separate names for the hard and soft forms of the letters that have hard and soft forms (presence/lack of weak dagesh)? Like bet/vet, kaf/chaf. Not all these differences are observed by every dialect, but some are near-universal (like kaf/chaf). Shin and Sin really don't alternate, even though they differ only in a dot. They probably deserve separate lerfu, though I'm not an authority on their history. Modern Hebrew pronounces tzadi as {ts}, Esp "c". Maybe {tsybu} would be clearer? Is that a legitimate lerfu? On Zipfean grounds, I should point out that tof is much more common than tet, and thus deserves the shorter lerfu. Similarly, tzadi has it all over samekh, and I think even Sin is more common. Samekh is pretty rare. Will you want final forms? The forms are considered more distinct than, say, Arabics 3 or 4 forms per letter depending on where in the word it is. On admittedly rare occasion, it becomes important whether it's final (some numerologists assign different values to the final letters). The vowel system in Hebrew is fairly complex. There are even two vowels which are written *exactly* the same, but technically are distinct, and some (like me) even pronounce them differently. What about the "hyphenated" vowels? I'll discuss this with you offline. I can swing Devanagari also, though only the Sanskrit letters, not those used only in later Hindi. ~mark (shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu)