[lojban-beginners] Re: double letters

[Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com>]

Jorge Llamb�as <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/14/07, Nathaniel Krause wrote:
> {stagrleoxari} and {spatrleoxari} ... {koendu}
>
> The "oe" seems likely to be confused with "oue". While it's non-obvious that
> the latter is legal, it seems the more plausible of the two.

"oue" would not be a problem under my proposal because "u" works
as a semi-consonant separating the two nuclei.

I agree that for some people "oe" and "oue" might be too close, or "ea"
and "eia", and so on, but I don't find that argument very persuasive
because Lojban, like most any other language, will always have some
sound combinations that are problematic for someone or other. For me,
like for most speakers of Spanish probably, "oue" and "oe", and "ea"
and "eia" are perfectly distinct.

Naturally, "ea" and "oe" must be distinguished not only from "eia" and "oue" but also from "e.a" and "o.e". I've no doubt that someone, somewhere can make this three-way distinction, and I'll take your word for it that you can do it (although, like Matt, I'm interested in hearing how it sounds), but

I strongly suspected it would seem problematic to a lot of people in the world. In jbovla phonotactics (by which I mean, the phonotactics of gismu, lujvo, and cmavo, excluding cmevla) two vowels can appear in a sequence precisely because one of them becomes a semi-vowel -- there's no precedent for having a sequence of two or more vowels where none of them is a semi-vowel.

> As for {ctiipyrias}, I don't see anything illegal about it, but ... there
> seems to be an urge among Lojbanists to push the limits of the language's
> phonotactics. Why? Let's all go easy on our future fellow pronouncers,
> please.

There's a tension between two forces to resolve: on the one hand, people
want borrowings and names to match as closely as possible the original
word (if such or such language allows this combination, why shouldn't
Lojban allow it too?) and on the other hand, we want them to fit as closely
as possible with the core words of the language, which are cmavo, gismu
and lujvo.

You're right, those probably are the main motivations, although I don't know how close we're ever going to able to get to a lot of names from a lot of languages (for instance, judging by Wikipedia, it seems like the Albanian word for Albania would be closer to
 {ctcipyrias}

 than {ctiipyrias}; I'm not sure how many people would argue that the former is valid)

Personally, I would only allow cmevla and fu'ivla to consist of syllables
that are possible in lujvo or cmavo. Unfortunately, that rule is already
broken by type-3 fu'ivla that introduce syllabic consonants, so some
extension is unavoidable.

I am quite to this idea. All other things equal, it is unfortunate that type-3 fu'ivla expand the space of allowable sounds, but this is not by itself an argument in favour of expanding it further.

Fortunately, the issues remaining to be settled are relatively minor and
affect only very few peripheral words, as most new cmevla and fu'ivla
that are coined do remain within the range of syllables that occur in lujvo.

If I'm not mistaken, the only two issues that have to be settled are
(1) whether or not to allow any possible string of vowels, and if some
restriction is imposed, what it will be, and
(2) what the allowed consonant clusters at the end of a cmevla should
be. Most cmevla end with a single consonant, but some have been
coined with consonant clusters at the end, which is not strange given that
English is a language that is particularly permissive with final consonant
clusters and most coiners are English speakers.

I definitely agree that English is particularly permissive with final consonant clusters (I remember particular incident in which I found myself struggling to pronounce the cluster at the end of "sixths"

 correctly).  But this seems like all the more reason to place some restrictions on what we consider valid, since the English-speaking majority of Lojbanists will naturally have a tendency to produce combinations that other people find difficult to pronounce.

mu'o mi'e .sen.

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