From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:59:10 2010 Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list Date: Wed Nov 27 06:37:00 1996 From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: subordinate interrogatives To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1887 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 27 06:37:00 1996 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Message-ID: Mark: > >{kuau} is just an alternative to {loy duu}. It is not approved by > >Lojban Central, because it is motivated solely by conceptual > >elegance, and not by dire need. > >The issue Jorge address is: What is the logical alternative to the > >colloquial {mo kaw}? [& Xorxes gives the answer.] > Your orthography gets harder to follow by the month. Why "kuau" for > "ku'au" but "kaw" for "kau"? Why isn't it "kuaw"? At least be > consistent. I'm not sure that CVhVV is valid. Anyway, I originally proposed {kuau} as CVhVhV (I think). Hence {kuau} rather than {kuaw}. > And what do you get by "loy" instaed of "loi"? Oh, loi for > lo'i? Right. > It doesn't look to me like you're gaining anything but your own > aesthetics, which doesn't seem reason enough to change a writing system > that others are using beyond recognition (you don't go to France and say > "You know what, guys? That cedilla is really dumb; from now on I'm writing > it with an s.") You might do that to French. With Lojban, there's more of a presumption of optimality and engineeredness - that the language has been engineered to make it optimal. Hence one has a correspondingly greater inclination to engage in such engineering oneself. More than issues of arbitrary and subjective aesthetics are involved. The question I ask myself is: if the orthography were being designed from scratch, which system would one choose? If that were the question being asked generally, and properly debated and voted on, then I might be more inclined to go with the collective choice. But in fact decisions and choices are governed by inertia and a will to preserve the status quo, and I am disinclined to myself feel governed by such choices. > Then again, I hypocritically support "h" as an alloglyph > for ' in Lojban. Go figure. > > ~mark That hardly has the same potential for sowing confusion. coo, mie And