Re: [lojban-beginners] Lojban sounds and Wikipedia article about those sounds

[Daeldir <daeldir@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 31 May 2013 21:05:46 -0700 (PDT)
la arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Saturday, June 1, 2013 4:53:28 AM UTC+4, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> >
> > On Friday, May 31, 2013 22:11:33 Daeldir wrote: 
> > > Also, about the “r” (I have a long story with the “r” ;-)), it points to 
> > an 
> > > alveolar tap. I thought it was an alveolar trill! My mistake (if it is 
> > one) 
> > > comes from [
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Phonology_and_orthography], 
> > > I guess, where an alveolar trill is given for the “r”. And it had 
> > something 
> > > to do with the spanish “r”, too, but I don't remember where I did read 
> > > that, and anyway, on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R], we can see that 
> > both 
> > > sound are used in spanish (so, it was not precise, but not false to do 
> > that 
> > > kind of comparison). Well, I would like to know what is the “best” sound 
> > > (as the two are correct, thank to lojban laxism about sounds 
> > > differentiation). First, to point it as an example, second, to correct 
> > any 
> > > “prefered way” that I could have put in the french translation (as the 
> > > french “r” is really different from both sounds, I spent some time on 
> > it). 
> >
> > Both the tap and the trill are valid "r" sounds, and are allophones in 
> > Lojban 
> > (unlike Spanish, where they are two different phonemes between vowels). My 
> > pronunciation rule is something like this: a trill at the beginning or end 
> > of 
> > a word, a tap between vowels, a trill before a consonant, a tap after a 
> > consonant, and as in English "mercy" between two consonants. 
> 
> 
> What? Is English alveolar/retroflex approximant not allowed? 
> 
> 
> >
> > Pierre 
> > -- 
> > li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa 
> >
> >

From my understanding, a lot of “r” sounds are allowed, and so, I think, English alveolar/retroflex approximant should be, as long as we don't misunderstand that sound for an other letter.

My question was about the “recommended” pronunciation (like, the french “r” sound is very strange for many people, but stay correct in lojban, I just wanted people that learn lojban to speak with a lojban accent, and not a french accent, if they wish to do so). 

On an other note, how do you pronunce words like “darxi” or “xruti”? When I try with a tap, “xruti” become “xcuti” and “darxi” becomes “dalxi”. My trill being a uvular one, I manage to pronunce those two words by “waving” my tongue but… Well, I have a hard time learning the “r” (at least, they explained to me an approximated relation beetween the french “r” and the lojban “x” on the french mailing list). 

I didn't like the “r” in italian, I don't really like it in french, I like that we can almost always omit it in english… :-° Well, I'm becoming a bit personnal about that “r”… Don't I ?


Digression:

(well, I already digressed, but the following really has nothing to do about beginning lojban and is only me sharing thoughts about lojban sounds – and not about my hatery of the “r”)

I find lojban “poor” in sounds, as there is not many of them. But lojban may become rich in “cultural accents”, since what is a significant difference in other languages is only a pronunciation singularity in lojban (I don't have an exemple in english, but in french, the only way to distinguish “les frais” (the costs) and “lait frais” (fresh milk) is in the accent – and people that do not “hear” those accents tend to do terrible mistakes (some french don't hear, or at least speak those accents). Although in “un brin bien brun”, some put a difference in each “un”, but every french understantd it and some don't hear *at all* the difference. That would be like in lojban, only “cosmetic” accent. Another example is with the spanish “r”: “pera” and “perra” are very different in spanish, but would be the same in lojban).

From that point of view, I think that lojban may “limit” the thoughts. Not in “thinking about the world”, but in “percepting the world”. I can't hear all the different vowels of mandarin. For me, they're all the same (well, not all, but one of “my” vowels correspond to a lot of “their” vowels). A native lojban speaker may not be able to distinguish “goal” and “gull”, “pera” and “perra” or “les frais” and “lait frais”… (that's pure supposition based on my knowledge of language acquisition in the first years of life – and I don't know if cultural accents will overcome or exacerbate that effect of the language)

I think it's a sad thing. But it's a good strategy : I can learn lojban, while I'm stuck in the first lesson of mandarin I ever attempted :-D

I wonder what would be the real impact on sounds understanding. As, for now, the only native lojban speakers have two native languages, I don't think we will be able to see if the lojban sounds paucity will impact them. Only in lojbanistan could we observe such impact :-)

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