From biomass@hobbiton.org Thu Mar 15 17:29:25 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: biomass@hobbiton.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 16 Mar 2001 01:29:25 -0000 Received: (qmail 33841 invoked from network); 16 Mar 2001 01:29:23 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 16 Mar 2001 01:29:23 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO elrond.hobbiton.org) (216.161.236.97) by mta2 with SMTP; 16 Mar 2001 01:29:23 -0000 Received: from hobbiton.org (biomass@thorin.hobbiton.org [216.161.236.98]) by elrond.hobbiton.org (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id f2G1SHq19477 for ; Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:28:17 -0600 (CST) Received: from localhost (biomass@localhost) by hobbiton.org (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id f2G1S7l20519 for ; Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:28:07 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:28:07 -0600 (CST) X-Sender: biomass@thorin To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Some questions Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Avital Oliver X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 5857 a) Regarding be/bei/be'o. I don't quite understand why bei is needed. Why can't it be defined that be understood as "what fills the place for '_______ cu SELBRI TEXT'", and sumti are separated the 'standard' way in a normal bridi b) After starting to teach Lojban to some friends, they all shouted out that "This goddamn 'y' letter is all fucked-up. It sounds too close to either a or e". I live in Israel, and Israeli speak in a european accent (which I understood is the 'best' way to pronounce Lojban). 'a' is NOT pronounced as in 'ball', but in a 'higher' way. It makes 'a' sound very close to 'y'. 'y' is also a non-standard sound in modern Hebrew. From my small experience in language construction, I always got stuck in the 5-vowel barrier. It's very tempting to get to more, but you always end up with some people not being able to diffrentiate. Anyone have any explanations? c) The use of pe with tense modifiers. I do not understand the grammer behind . This seems idiotic, or at least 'forcing the meaning' into the phrase. Isn't a sumti supposed to some after pe? And if not, what is the exact way of understanding the meaning? d) LOJBAN, what's with the books? =) I probably have more, but this is for starters. Bye, Avital Oliver.