Message-Id: <9202121940.AA22546@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date:         Wed, 12 Feb 1992 12:43:03 EST
Reply-To: John Cowan <cbmvax!UUNET.UU.NET!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>
Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!LOJBAN>
From: John Cowan <cbmvax!UUNET.UU.NET!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>
Subject:      Re: Unofficial alphabet lists for Lojban/Latin/English, Greek,
To: John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>,
        Eric Raymond <eric@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>,
        Eric Tiedemann <est@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <9202112350.AA25503@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>; from "Mark E.
              Shoulson" at Feb 11, 92 6:46 pm
Status: RO

la mark. clsn. cusku di'e:

> 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?

Lojban ' = y'y. English h = y'y.bu.  I'm not trying to deal with English
(or any other language) punctuation marks here: there is a separate lerfu
subsystem for dealing with them.

> Why not
> {.uybu} for "w"?

Hmm, sounds reasonable.  Comments, anyone?

> 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.

No problem.  After a "ru'o", which establishes Cyrillic mode, all lerfu
are taken to have their Cyrillic interpretations, so "ty." is not "t" but
"teh".

> Is {cybubu} really even a
> valid lerfu?

Yes.  "bububububu..." sequences are legal, if ugly.

> 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.

Yes.  This list has been around a while.

> 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.

I don't know.  Originally "i"/"j" and "u"/"v"/"w" were not distinct letters;
now they are.  The 1976 Israel Standards Institute computer charset separates
bet/vet, kaf/khaf, peh/feh, sin/shin.  This is probably reasonable.

> Modern Hebrew pronounces tzadi as {ts}, Esp "c".  Maybe {tsybu}
> would be clearer?  Is that a legitimate lerfu?

Alas, no.  "tsybu" is not a lerfu because "tsy" is not a word.  Only by, cy,
dy, ... are allowed to end in "y".

> On Zipfean grounds, I
> should point out that tof is much more common than tet, and thus deserves
> the shorter lerfu.

Excellent!  This is the kind of feedback I need.

> Similarly, tzadi has it all over samekh, and I think
> even Sin is more common.  Samekh is pretty rare.

So propose a new version, and we'll be happy to accept it.

> 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).

Tentatively, no.  This decision is subject to change.

> 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.

Okay.  The character set mentioned above has the following vowels, so they
at least should be included:  hireq, sereh, segol, qubbus, qamas, pathah,
shewa, hataph pathah, hataph segol, hataph qamas, holem, shureq.  Needless
to say, these are just random character strings to me.  Can you map them
into the Lojban vowel set in any reasonable fashion?

> I can swing Devanagari also, though only the Sanskrit letters, not those
> used only in later Hindi.

Go for it!

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban