From rlpowell@csclub.uwaterloo.ca Fri Jan 19 09:37:14 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rlpowell@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_1_2); 19 Jan 2001 17:37:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 12858 invoked from network); 19 Jan 2001 17:31:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 19 Jan 2001 17:31:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca) (129.97.134.11) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Jan 2001 17:31:30 -0000 Received: (from rlpowell@localhost) by calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.3) id MAA16780; Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:36:46 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:36:45 -0500 To: John Cowan Cc: michael helsem , lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] speech synthesizer Message-ID: <20010119123645.F29655@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> References: <20010119114611.C29655@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <3A68757F.3050402@reutershealth.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3A68757F.3050402@reutershealth.com>; from jcowan@reutershealth.com on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 12:12:31PM -0500 X-eGroups-From: Robin Lee Powell From: Robin Lee Powell X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 5148 On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 12:12:31PM -0500, John Cowan wrote: > Robin Lee Powell wrote: > > > I've been wondering: why _does_ lojban use ' instead of h? > > Historically, the vowel pairs with ' were originally written without > it, and you simply had to know that "ai" was a diphthong and "eu" > was two separate vowels. The current Lojban opposition between > "ai" and "a'i" did not (does not, in Institute Loglan) exist. > Morphologically, "h" would suggest a consonant, but ' works more like > a diacritic on a vowel-pair, like the French trema. It's still _incredibly_ obnoxious when computing. -Robin -- http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. Information wants to be free. Too bad most of it is crap. --RLP