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

[Leonardo Castro <leolucas1980@gmail.com>]

> Another problem for them is telling "r" from "l". Like the Korean
> language, the orthography doesn't distinguish between the alveolar

Maybe that's why Toki Pona has no "r":

"Toki Pona has nine consonants (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five
vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/)."
Wikipedia

I have expressed my wish of getting a simple phonotactic system which
preserves word breaking detection to the linguist Justin B. Rye.

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/

He suggested me the following:

All morphemes must:

1) start with a consonant;
2) end with a CV syllable;
3) contain no CVCV sequences (CVCV is always CV+CV).

Otherwise, syllables are (C)V(n).

"Illegal morphemes include "ionko", "kanten", "siahane"
etcetera; legal ones include "kante", "naupu", "lionko",
"toadenki", "sa", "laimeohe", "dunna", etcetera.  I'd
probably also say: all monosyllables are grammatical
markers, and exclamations (like "aha!") are never valid
morphemes."

Well, it's a nice system, but I would also prohibit the
encounters /nm/, /nn/ and all sort of "double letter".
Probably I would exclude the voiced consonants too.
So, I doubt that any people would say that it's hard to
pronounce. We could also consider that some
languages have only three vowels (usually "u", "i" and "a"),
but a loglan or auxlan with less than five vowels would
be absurdly limited.


2009/6/2 tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>:
> 2009/6/2 Leonardo Castro <leolucas1980@gmail.com>:
>>> 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.
>
> Also,
>
>  Mite simatta. = .u'u (mi) ba'o viska = (I) have (wrongfully) seen (this/that).
>
> can become
>
>  Mit's'atta. ("t's'a" would sound almost the same as "tca" in Lojban)
>
> This kind of shortening words by leaving out vowels (thus potentially
> forming consonant clusters) is pretty common in everyday Japanese. But
> this is done unconsciously. Consciously pronouncing consonant clusters
> still proves difficult for most native speakers of Japanese.
>
> Another problem for them is telling "r" from "l". Like the Korean
> language, the orthography doesn't distinguish between the alveolar
> approximant and the alveolar *lateral* approximant, or the alveolar
> trill/tap/flap and the alveolar *lateral* flap (although the
> distinction is made again unconsciously to some extent in their actual
> pronunciation).
>
> tijlan
>
>
>
>