Date: Tue, 5 May 92 09:39:09 -0400
From: cbmvax!uunet!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson
Message-Id: <9205051339.AA04319@startide.ctr.columbia.edu>
To: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan
Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, conlang@buphy.bu.edu,
        70674.1215@compuserve.com
In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Mon, 4 May 92 12:57:55 EDT <m0li6MR-0001SXC@snark.thyrsus.com>
Subject: An alternative orthography for Lojban
Status: RO

Sorry, John.  I can't support your "alternative orthography."  I can see
using the options available in the current orthography to get some of the
advantages yours offers, but as yours stands--no.

For starters, why replace {x} with {h}?  I note that you missed doing that
in your example; {xelso} comes through just as it was.  {x} is really not
that hard to get for the sound; many languages use it as such already.
What's tough is convincing an English speaker to scrape his {h}'s, and a
French speaker to pronounce them at all, much less with scrape.

Why muck with {au}?  It really is a combination of {a}+{u}-->[w].  I see no
advantage to {ao}.

Wow, your apostrophe-replacing rules are confusing.  I'll grant that for
sounds like {e'a} the apostrophe could be made optional, since there's no
other thing it could mean (with the possible exception of {e,a}), but the
hassles you get for losing it there make it hardly worth your while.  Me,
I'm partial to permitting {h} as an alternative for {'}; so long as you
remember that it's not a real letter it looks fine (to my English-language
eye), and interrupts the flow of text something less than the puntuation
marks would. (Note that I'm not for universally using {h}; just in cases
where {'} is for some reason impracticable, or if the writer really feels
like it).

I can see some advantage in your use of capitalization for cmene and {.i},
and the dropping of periods.  Makes splitting sentences easier and flags
cmene.  Moreover, it's not at odds with the current orthography, just a
different convention.  But I'd propose something slightly different for
that.  Periods are, of course, always optional, so long as your spaces are
written in the right places.  So I'd drop them except in {.i}, which I
think does a decent job of flagging sentence-breaks too, so long as it's
not confused for {e}, {a}, etc.  Hence we can lose the periods before
those, and before the other vowel-initial words.  Hmmm.  Maybe {I} is
better, after all.  Also, sometimes it's nice to regard something like
{na.a} as a compound cmavo.  Would your proposal require us to write
{na a}?  Would mine?  Periods after cmene could certainly be dropped.

Doubling vocalic liquids/nasals?  Hmmm.  I'm not positive.  Might be useful
in poetry to set off syllabication where it's ambiguous/optional (I could
see arguments that {voirli'u} is three or four syllables, though I
pronounce four.  Similarly, I'd pronounce {loinroi} bisyllabically, but
maybe someone else would make the {n} vocalic).  Would current orthography
use a comma to specify the vocalic-liquid pronunciation?

I think capitalization is probably better than apostrophes for stress,
especially since you'll want your orthography at least slightly
backward-compatible, and apostrophe is already heavily-loaded.

~mark