[lojban-beginners] Reasoning for the apostrophe (Was Re: Re: proper pronunciation of apostrophe)

[Joshua Choi <joshua@choi.name>]

Yes, but it refers to Chapter 4, which doesn't explicitly explain the  
reasoning. Whenever it mentions apostrophes, it's in something like  
"not including the apostrophe" or "not counting the apostrophe". I'm  
only guessing, but it sort of seems like the reasoning that "h" is  
represented by the apostrophe is to emphasize that it doesn't count as  
a letter in a lot of morphological rules. Is this right?

On 20 August 2009, at 7:10 PM, Minimiscience wrote:

> 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.
>
> --
> no zo mi nenri zo bende