From - Tue Feb 20 15:00:14 1996 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id FAA07803 for ; Fri, 16 Feb 1996 05:41:18 -0500 Message-Id: <199602161041.FAA07803@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 3056AB1C ; Fri, 16 Feb 1996 5:07:52 -0500 Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 05:06:07 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: loglan rapprochement orthography To: shoulson@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1405 >Well, "graphically distinct" is in the eye of the beholder. Is "a" really >"graphically distinct" from "s"? No more so than any other two letters. >Yet one is a consonant and one is not. "r" is sometimes a vowel, so it's >not strictly a consonant; do we need to make it "graphically distinct" as >well? Those distinctions are dictated by the language and its users, and >change as those do, not by how other languages opt to use the same symbols. > >~mark I see your point but, while some letterals may stand for consonants in one language and vowels in other languages, there are some letters that ONLY stand for vowels, and others that stand ONLY for consonants. Thus a/e/i/o/u AFAIK are never used in any orthography to stand for a consonant, whereas many if not all of "bcdghkpqtx" only stand for consonants and never vowels (or anything else) leaving the other letters somewhat dependent on the phonology of the language and the current convention of terminology as to whether syllbic consonants are "consonants" or "vowels" or something else. ' is one symbol that is some languages has phonological value, usually consonant like, but not considered a consonant by the nonlinguists who speak the language. ^necessarily I have heard that it sometimes represents rough breathing, sometimes a glottal stop. I don;t know if there are other otpions. lojbab