[lojban-beginners] Re: apostrophes?

[Michael van der Gulik <mikevdg@gulik.co.nz>]

Raphaël Poss wrote:

> Le 20 janv. 05, à 01:24, Michael van der Gulik a écrit :
>
> > Why does Lojban use apostrophes instead of "h"'s? It seems much more 
> > natural to use "h"'s, as it keeps words together (consider that an 
> > apo'stro'phe ins'er'ts sp'ac'es i'n'to wo'rds, breaking them up and 
> > making them harder to read as one word).
> >
> > Is it acceptable to use, e.g. "keha" instead of "ke'a"? Or will 
> > people become angry?
>
>
> Hmm... I'd rather write "ke·a", "ke¨a", "ke°a" or even "ke:a" to keep 
> it ASCII.
>
> a co:lon do:es not ins:er:t sp:ac:es i:n:to wo:rds... at least not too 
> much :)
How about "keá"? Just like the double-dots in Raphaël :-).

(okay, its a bad idea because 1: that's pronounced differently (keeaa 
rather than keha) and 2: its not 7-bit ASCII).

My biggest problem with the apostrophe is that the typography looks 
really bad, especially in fixed-width fonts (try reading lojban in a 
fixed-width font! Yuck). Variable-width fonts and proper typesetting 
look much better, but cmavo still look like they have a gaping hole in them.

Are these assumptions correct:
* the <<'>> isn't a consonant but is used to separate consecutive vowels 
from each other.
* "h" isn't used because it is a consonant in the latin alphabet.
* The cmavo are always V, VV, CV or CVV. Adding an "h" would make it 
complicated unless "h" was marked as an exception (or a different 
typographical convention for a <<'>>, which would confuse everybody).

Mikevdg.