From nicholas@uci.edu Thu Aug 09 18:15:57 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 10 Aug 2001 01:15:56 -0000 Received: (qmail 3245 invoked from network); 10 Aug 2001 01:15:56 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 10 Aug 2001 01:15:56 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 10 Aug 2001 01:15:56 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA24967; Thu, 9 Aug 2001 18:15:55 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 18:15:55 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Tengwar Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 9382 Yes, I must be going insane to be doing this when I've already run out of Lojban time. But: Just learnt elron's mapping of Lojban to Tengwar. It is cool. But --- (In the following, I use 0 for the short vowel carrier, and _ for the long vowel carrier.) 1. {uu} in Lojban is not a double vowel under any circumstances. It has a non-syllabic initial vowel, same as {ua} and {ue}. To write {ua} as "0u0a", but {uu} as "_u", is seriously misleading, and not at all cute. 2. Elron uses the tengwar halla thing for apostrophe --- which I'll transcribe here as h. This means {oi} is written as "0o0i", and {o'i} as {0oh0i}. Since we're mostly doing Tengwar for aesthetic reasons, I think this is still much too prominent for {'}. {'} is really meant to be just a syllabic delimiter; {o'i} and {oi} should look more similar than that. In fact, in my own handwritten Lojban, I tend to write (smart) apostrophe *over* the previous letter. (In this, I run counter to And's amity for 'h'. Then again, I doubt And thinks that highly of Tengwar. :-) 3. Ergo, since we have an available vowel carrier that doesn't actually fit Lojban, and a treatment of apostrophe that I think overkill, why don't we kill two birds with one rune, and make the long vowel carrier into the apostrophe? That way you'd get {oi} as "0o0i", and {o'i} as "0o_i". More importantly, {uu} as "0u0u", and {u'u} as "0u_u" --- not "_u", which looks nothing like "0u0u". You'd get a much less prolix Tengwar, and I think it'd be easier to read. I'm perfectly happy to let a thousand flowers wither in the desert in this one --- Tengwar is not exactly popular in Lojbanistan anyway, although I think it would make for some fitting Lojban Brochure & Lessons cover art. What I worry about is that what little Lojban Tengwar work has already been done may have made Elron's mapping sacred. So how about it, you two other Lojbanists who know that Lojban Tengwar even exists? Admit this as an alternative mode? Or damn it as making Lojban Tengwar even more intractable? I think as an alternative mode it'll cause little damage, myself: the minute you see more than one long vowel carrier, you'll know this is not a text abounding in {.ii} and {.uu} attitudinals... P.S. I know Elron advocates Mode 3, which uses full vowels to handle the sundry diphthongs. I don't know about Tengwar accepted practice, but I do think this is ugly, and defeats the whole point of a CV-like 'syllabary'. So I'd like a solution in place without 'matres lectionis'. -- == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu} nicholas@uci.edu -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias