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Date:         Sun, 14 Mar 1993 21:04:05 GMT
Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@COGSCI.ED.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@COGSCI.ED.AC.UK>
Subject:      phonetic irregularity
To: Erik Rauch <erikr@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
In-Reply-To:  Logical Language Group's message of Sun,               14 Mar 1993 15:06:10 -0500 <11307.9303142011@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Status: OR
Message-ID: <nqUlIG5zIfN.A.85.B30kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

>  Date:     Sun, 14 Mar 1993 15:06:10 -0500
>  From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@COM.GREBYN>

[...]

>  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.

Including Modern Greek, Georgian, the Indonesian, Melanesian and
Polynesian tongues, ...

But Japanese?  By no means.  No counterpart of Lojban {u} exists in
Japanese, neither does a precise counterpart of Lojban {o}; the vowel
"o" in Japanese is rather high, and the vowel "u" is not rounded.

Russian?  Hardly so, what with the massive vowel reduction and the
equally massive diphthongisation.

The Romance tongues?  Spanish, yes.  But Italian and Portuguese have
two varieties of "e" and "o" each, Roumanian has two unrounded back
vowels beside "a" (both of them quite frequent), and French has a
wealth of vowels, among which the counterparts of the five vowels of
Lojban are hardly the most frequent ones.

Ivan