[lojban-beginners] Re: bu denpa

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 2:38 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why "denpa bu" instead of "bu denpa", which to me would make more
> sense, to the extent that it would be consistent with "zo denpa"?

The "names" of consonants are by, cy, dy,..., zy. The natural names
for vowels (.a, .e, .i, .o, .u) were already taken by the time lerfu
were defined (Lojban being "the logical language", the logical
connectives were more or less the first words to be defined, and the
shortest possible words were immediately grabbed.) So, the vowels
became .abu, .ebu, .ibu, .obu, .ubu so that they begin with the same
letter they name, like the consonants, and then the -bu suffix was
generalized to apply to any word. (I don't swear this is exactly how
it happened, but it's probably close.)

>From the point of view of consistency, it would probably make more
sense to reverse "zo denpa" to "denpa zo" rather than reversing "denpa
bu", since single-word suffix modifiers are much more numerous than
prefix: BU, UI, CAI, NAI, RAhO, SI, and some others follow the word
they modify vs. only ZO and BAhE preceding the word.

>From the point of view of the syntax however, it would be easier if BU
was a prefix.

mu'o mi'e xorxes