From lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Wed Apr 10 22:01:08 1996 Received: from punt3.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA11305 ; Wed, 10 Apr 96 22:01:04 BST Received: from punt-3.mail.demon.net by mailstore for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk id 829161636:20776:1; Wed, 10 Apr 96 19:40:36 BST Received: from relay-1.mail.demon.net ([158.152.1.140]) by punt-3.mail.demon.net id aa20307; 10 Apr 96 19:39 +0100 Received: from cunyvm.cuny.edu ([128.228.1.2]) by relay-1.mail.demon.net id aa10589; 10 Apr 96 19:38 +0100 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 4624; Wed, 10 Apr 96 14:26:53 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8218; Wed, 10 Apr 96 14:26:23 EDT Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 14:25:48 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: * on h X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Multiple recipients of list LOJBAN Message-ID: <829161534.10589.0@cunyvm.cuny.edu> Status: R Last month, And wrote: >As for the idea that using >implies that there is a C at that position: it doesn't when the lojban >orthography is looked at in isolation, and while admittedly H functions >as a rather defective consonant in the phonologies of latin and some >other major languages that use the roman alph, equally it also functions >as a diacritic of sorts in pretty well every major roman alph language. A good point, but only for the linguistically aware/educated. The average schoolkid, or even the average Esperantist who uses 'h' instead of a diacritic, is NOT thinking of the fact that 'h' is a diacritic. The term that they use in the schools is "consonant blend" of two "consonants". While you and I may realize that "sh" is something more than a blend of "s" and "h", that is not what the average kid is taught. >Then there's the matter, raised by Ivan & JulianP, of omission of <'> >obscuring certain within-selmao patternings. The same criticism can be >levelled at the loglany alternative standard, of course. My initial >response to this is: (i) how widespread are these patternings? (ii) >how many are lost through nonuse of the std std? (iii) are any useful >new patternings in fact brought into being by nonuse of the std std? >Let's assume for the sake of argument that the upshot of (i-iii) is that >the std std is significantly better. Well in that case we could equally >well seek a way of marking , e.g. by some diacritical >mark, or by using a different character for the glide - e.g. > (also ) tho this particular >suggestion has the disadvantage of making correspond (unambiguously) >to two phonemes. If I were "doing it over", I might indeed use 'y' for the diphthong glide, and try to find another way to express the schwa. The only two free letters in that case would be 'q' and 'h', though, which are both traditionally consonants in natlang orthographies. The bottom line is that Roman orthography has too few vowel letterals, even for the fairly sparse vowel set of Lojban. lojbab