From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sun Mar 14 10:06:10 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 14 Mar 1993 15:13:45 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3267; Sun, 14 Mar 93 15:12:40 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9080; Sun, 14 Mar 93 15:13:42 EST Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1993 15:06:10 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: phonetic irregularity X-To: wil@CIX.COMPULINK.CO.UK X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: OR Message-ID: The Lojban 'o' is intended to be a pure vowel, and not the diphthong of "doe". The better example would be a Romance 'o', for those who have been exposed to Romance languages. Historically, there was considered for Loglan/L Lojban the use of the other variety of 'o', the "open o" - the two dialects were "frogman Loglan" and "showman Loglan", and we chose with Lojban to go woth the latter, at leats partly because half of the American populace speaks a dialect wherein open o is indistinguishable from 'a'. Thus I pronounce "law" and "la" identically, though I know others do not. The pure vowels chosen are maximally separated, and correspond to the most frequent 5 vowels in many languages, including Japanese, Russian, and the Romance tongues. The single letter Lojban vowels should NEVER be pronounced as diphthongs, and should always be spoken tensely (I always tell people "smile when you speak Lojban" because the tensing of your lips to smile is often enough to get an English speaker to not slop the vowels too much.) On the other hand, all vowel pairs in the normal orthography are diphthongs. They happen to be the diphthong that derives from saying the pure vowels together quickly, but they are recognized to indeed be diphthongs. Thus "oi" is not considered to be the same sound as "o", and the sound of "Chloe" the way I pronounce it at least, would be in Lojban "o,i", or even "o,ui" whereas "oi" is more like the vowel in "boy". On the other hand, phonologically, you would have been correct if you called us on a slightly different irregularity. It turns out to be phonologically very difficult to do an "ol" or an "or" without opening the "o" a little, so in Lojban words with those letter combinations, the "o" is norammly pronounced with the sound you suggest. On the other hand, I only know this because it has been explained to me - I don't hear those "o"s as the same sound as in "law" or "awe". lojbab