From pycyn@aol.com Mon Sep 04 18:07:09 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26343 invoked from network); 5 Sep 2000 01:07:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 5 Sep 2000 01:07:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r18.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.72) by mta3 with SMTP; 5 Sep 2000 01:07:09 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r18.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.15.) id a.90.940e2ae (658) for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 21:07:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <90.940e2ae.26e5a135@aol.com> Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 21:07:01 EDT Subject: RE: learning lojban To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com 1. While the final vowels of gismu are important for forming rafsi and related cmavo, they are essential for only a few gismu themselves. For most words, there is only one vowel to go with the first four letters. You will want to learn them eventually, but they may come easier in connection with the other words and in the meantime, you will not be misunderstood too badly -- except by machines, of course -- if you get an occasional vowel wrong. You will be corrected, however. 2. Two nations divided by a common language again. The ideal Lojban /o/ standing alone is somewhere between the non-glide part of "long o" and the usual sound (in both RP and GA) of the vowel in "law" (less the r-ish bit both are inclined to add from time to time). As xorxes notes, we various English speakers tend to say /ou/ for it in all cases, leaving nothing for 'ou' to do. To further the problem, RP does say "John" close onto proper /djon/ but GA is usually /djan/, parallelling exactly the differences aloso in "on," what might otherwise be a useful guide word.