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From: Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 22:52:52 -0500
Message-ID: <425e4ac21001031952t22834298oa24977c0eef72d35@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [lojban] Initial impression
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
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On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 5:55 AM, Klaus F. Abel <kfa@gmx.net> wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> A happy new year to everybody!

.a'o do cnino nanca gleki doi pendo
(Hopefully you are new year happy, friend!)


> From an initial impression, regarding the chapter on alternative
> orthographies, it appears to me that development of Lojban is still
> in flux. Is that correct?

Yes and no.  As the language has been around for a long time, there
are many long standing traditions.  But we're also open to new ideas.


> If yes, I hope it's not a complete heresy to sound off a few spontaneous
> dislikes which might put some people off getting friendly with it.

It's no heresy, in fact it's somewhat of a rite of passage.


> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly.

They're not punctuation, they're letters.  Letters are quite arbitrary
in general, there's nothing odd about having a couple of letters that
are small dots.


> And the apostrophe represents an omission,

If it's any consolation, many of the apostrophes in Lojban represent
omission.  For instance "nanca" has the combining form "na'a" (as in
"cabna'a", this year), with an apostrophe in place of "nc".


> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h'
> sound, what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it
> is otherwise not used at all?

We do produce text like this, every once in a while.  Look, I'll do it
right now:

mi ihi pilno lo drata tadji muhi lo zahi lo ninpre cu nelci
(I, in togetherness, use the other method so that the newbie will like it.)

Doesn't hurt anything, and we can all read it fine.  It's just never
caught on as the main way of writing, for various reasons.


> In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over any other?

Well there are actually various ways that sound is special in Lojban.
It only comes between vowels, and it doesn't count as a letter for a
certain letter counting algorithm in making word shapes.

As far as why we keep using the apostrophe, perhaps it's because it
helps distinguish two-vowel cmavo from cmavo clusters ("tana", that is
not, vs "ta'a/taha", said when interrupting), or because it helps in
seeing the rafsi in lujvo, or of course conservative inertia. :)


> Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper
> graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier
> recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are
> examples of such an endeavour.

We've had various scripts invented in the past few years, it's been
fun.  None have caught on yet in any big way, just a few posts here
and there to the Jbotcan, but it's always possible.


> 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand
> correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to
> me almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it
> disturbing at best.

All languages do violence to each other's names, I'm afraid.

Lojban is one of the very few you'll find with an escape hatch, where
names can come through a "zoi" or "la'o" unaltered.


> All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing
> you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.


ki'e .i .a'o lo xamgu do ji'a funca
(Thank you.  I hope that you as well have good fortune.)


mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o