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Re: [lojban-beginners] Questions on the sounds chosen for Lojban
Really? I pronounce lojban {e} as in "b[e]t" which is a completely different sound from "b[a]t" I think. Both of which are different from "b[i]t".
The choice to leave out some vowels kind of annoyed me at first as well, OP. But I grew to accept if after realizing that lack of some vowel sounds is acceptable if it's in the name of having unique phonemes for each vowel. You can get SOME of your favorite vowel sounds back with diphthongs like {ai} = "b[i]te", {ei} = "w[a]y", {oi} = "t[oy]", {au} = "h[ow]", etc...
But those actually make sense given the component vowels that make up the diphthong. If you say lojban {a} and quickly roll into {u} it comes off sounding like english "ow".
But there are only 6 vowel letters and there are (off the top of my head) 8 fundamental vowel sounds that can't be constructed from diphthongs of other vowels. These are lojban a, e, i, o, u, and y plus the english b[a]t and b[i]t.
If we wanted those sounds, we'd have to add new letterals or assign un-used diphthongs to these two "missing" vowels. I'd be comfortable with the first option because it would only expand the potential word space. But the second option seems very un-lojbanic and I'd fight it tooth-and-nail :)
As for the two "th" sounds... well, there are a ton of consonant-like sounds that didn't make it into lojban. We can't get them all in there. I seem to remember hearing an argument against [th]e that went something like "many languages don't have that sound and it is extremely difficult to pronounce for people who haven't grown up with it".
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Timo Paulssen
<timonator@perpetuum-immobile.de> wrote:
On 01/21/2011 07:41 AM, Greendogo wrote:
> I was wondering what criteria was chosen for the sounds used in
> Lojban.
Hello!
Even though I don't know about the criteria for the choices, I hope i
can help you with this mail.
> For instance, why was the German sound used for "x" used, but the
> sounds [th]ink, [th]e, b[a]t, and b[i]t were not?
[th] is a valid pronunciation of {'} and the a in bat is a lot like
lojbans {e}.
mu'o mi'e timos
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