[lojban-beginners] Re: proper pronunciation of apostrophe

[Minimiscience <minimiscience@gmail.com>]

de'i li 20 pi'e 08 pi'e 2009 la'o fy. Joshua Choi .fy. cusku zoi skamyxatra.
> Just wondering, what reasoning was behind the decision to give the "h"  
> sound a uniquely different symbol, the apostrophe? Was it to emphasize  
> that it could represent any unused unvoiced fricative? Was it because it 
> looked nicer in certain cmavo?
.skamyxatra

Section 3.3 of the CLL states:

> The apostrophe represents a phoneme similar to a short, breathy English
> ``h'', (IPA [h]).  The letter ``h'' is not used to represent this sound for
> two reasons: primarily in order to simplify explanations of the morphology,
> but also because the sound is very common, and the apostrophe is a visually
> lightweight representation of it.  The apostrophe sound is a consonant in
> nature, but is not treated as either a consonant or a vowel for purposes of
> Lojban morphology (word-formation), which is explained in Chapter 4.  In
> addition, the apostrophe visually parallels the comma and the period, which
> are also used (in different ways) to separate syllables.

mu'omi'e .kamymecraijun.

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