[lojban-beginners] Re: Pronunciation: a major problem in spreading lojban

[Leonardo Castro <leolucas1980@gmail.com>]

> I would note that Japanese pays its price for having such a simple
> phonetics: tremendous amount of allophones in one part of vocabulary
> (especially e.g. kango), and long words in another part.

In fact, you can form much more words following the pattern "CCVCV"
than "CVVCV", so the lojban system is more economic. But I would also
say that the price Lojban pays for having short words is having most
of his speakers around the world being linguists and other smart
professionals.

> Also, I think that languages (almost) without consonant clusters are rather
> rare. The only famous examples I know, are Japanese and Chinese (are there

If you consider semivowels and nasals as consonants, Japanese does
have some consonant clusters. And I guess "consonant clusters" can
occur in Chinese when two subsequent words are pronounced fast: "tong
shi".

Languages with none or few simple consonant clusters include Maori,
Tahitian, Hawaiian, Swahili (and most bantu languages), practically
every language of the Tupi family, etc. Almost every language admits
less consonant clusters than those of the German and Slavic language
families (English is included).

But having consonant clusters in your mother tongue doesn't make you
able to pronounce the consonant clusters of other languages: the
cluster /skl/ is quite simple to pronounce for many people, but
anglophones don't pronounce it in "muscle".

Besides, many languages have phonemes which may look or sound as
consonant encounters for non-native speakers, but they are rather
single phonemes, for instance, "gb" in yoruba, "tl" in nahuatl and
"mb" in many languages.

> any examples in Europe?). But, as I can judge from my experience with native

Indo-european languages have a particularly high occurrence of
consonant clusters, but it lacks other common features used to
distinguish words in other languages, such as tone. Imagine a tonal
loglan...

> Chinese speakers, the most serious problem for them is not consonant
> clusters, but voiced consonants, like b, d, g. The students from China,
> learning here, in Russia, are getting to pronounce consonant clusters quite
> fast, but even those of them who speak almost fluent, pronounce voiced
> consonants incorrectly.

I guess that realizing the contrast between voiced and unvoiced
consonants for them is as difficult as getting used with the contrast
aspirated/unaspirated (of Arabic, for instance) for most speakers of
European languages.
Probably that's why Toki Pona does not include voiced consonants.



2009/6/1 Dmitry Shintyakov <shintyakov@gmail.com>:
>
>
> 2009/6/1 Leonardo Castro <leolucas1980@gmail.com>
>>
>> Hi, folks!
>>
>> I wonder why the patterns of basic lojban words were not chosen to be
>> "CVVCV" and "CVCVV" instead of "CCVCV" and "CVCCV" (I would also add
>> "CVNCV" and "CVVV" to the list).
>>
>> Anglophones are relatively well accustomed to consonant clusters, but
>
>
>>
>> In my opinion, an auxlang should be no more complicated than Toki Pona:
>>
> a'u Everybody cares about Japanese sou much. Let them judge for themselves.
>
> I would note that Japanese pays its price for having such a simple
> phonetics: tremendous amount of allophones in one part of vocabulary
> (especially e.g. kango), and long words in another part.
>
> Also, I think that languages (almost) without consonant clusters are rather
> rare. The only famous examples I know, are Japanese and Chinese (are there
> any examples in Europe?). But, as I can judge from my experience with native
> Chinese speakers, the most serious problem for them is not consonant
> clusters, but voiced consonants, like b, d, g. The students from China,
> learning here, in Russia, are getting to pronounce consonant clusters quite
> fast, but even those of them who speak almost fluent, pronounce voiced
> consonants incorrectly.
>
> Also, Lojban is not an auxlang, and simplicity was not its main goal.
>