[lojban-beginners] Re: letter names over phone

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Monday 14 January 2008 16:25, Chris Capel wrote:
> In English, it's easy to confuse certain pairs of letters when
> spelling out words over the phone, notably s and f. (They sound almost
> identical.) Lojban would be susceptible to the same thing for {sy} and
> {fy}. Is there some standard way to differentiate when spelling out
> words? I know the numbers were designed to not be susceptible to this
> sort of thing; it's odd provisions weren't made for the letters as
> well.

You use a word containing that letter and follow it with {bu}. You can use the 
Lojbanized version of the international spelling alphabet (e.g. {carlis. bu}) 
or make one up. I once made one up, but I don't know where it is.

I was once talking Lojban on the phone, on a line with the high frequencies 
attenuated, and misheard {xu la xod. kansa do?} as {xu la xod. tamca do?}.

> In Spanish the letters b and v are *pronounced* identically, so even
> in person they must be differentiated if context doesn't make them
> unambiguous (often by saying "be grande" and "ve chica"). And off
> topic, does anyone know how you pronounced accented letters when
> spelling out spanish words?

My mom said "be de burro" and "ve de vaca". There are some pairs of words that 
differ only in b/v; the first that comes to mind is "tubo" (tubnu) and "tuvo" 
(pu ponse). I usually pronounce them differently, but some words spelled 
with "v" I pronounce with "b".

Pierre