Re: [lojban] [hobyrne: Alphabet]

[Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com>]

Visible Speech is certainly a clever and intriguing idea, and is well worth considering if a new alphabet is necessary. This might come up, for instance, as part of a plan to get rid of the irregular spelling of English, as was the case with Shavian. However, I'm not sure I see its relevance to Lojban, which already has regular spelling. The sub-par Latin alphabet just doesn't seem like a significant impediment to learning Lojban. Mr. O'Byrne writes, "If you know most of
the alphabet, and come across a symbol you haven't seen before, there's
a good chance you could pronounce it anyway"; but, given that ours only has 24 letters (27 counting period, comma, and space), it should be fairly easy to learn all of them and thus never encounter an unknown symbol. Anyway, I wonder how many literate people there are in the world today who don't already have at least a vague idea what sounds most of the Latin letters stand for (and how many literate people under the age of
 35)?

-Nat Krause

Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

User is not on the list, so include him in replies, please.

-robin

----- Forwarded message from Hugh O'Byrne -----

Subject: Alphabet
From: Hugh O'Byrne
To: lojban@lojban.org
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:30:31 -0400

To whom it may concern,

I adore Lojban. The biggest weakness it has, IMHO, is its alphabet.

Recently, I came across "Visible Speech". The symbols of this alphabet
indicate the sound they represent by their shape. For example, 'b',
'd', and 'g' (as in bay, day, gay) are represented by the same symbol in
three different orientations, because the sounds are so similar. 'm' is
a nasal 'b' sound, so its symbol is similar to 'b', with a small
modification. 'n' is a nasal 'd', so it's the 'd' symbol with the same
modification. 'ng' is a nasal 'g', so it's the 'g' symbol with the same
modification.

It seems to be perfectly in harmony with the philosophy of Lojban. It
is more than phonetic; is a logical, pictorial, categorical ordering of
sounds. It should be just about as easy for anyone in the world, no
matter what their primary language is, to learn. If you know most of
the alphabet, and come across a symbol you haven't seen before, there's
a good chance you could pronounce it anyway - which you cannot say about
*any* other alphabet that I know of. It is an extensive alphabet, so
perhaps just a subset of it is all that's necessary (or even wanted).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Speech
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/visiblespeech.htm

I would love to know what the LLG thinks of Visual Speech.

Hugh.

--
Hugh O'Byrne
1115 Vassar Ave.
South Bend IN 46616
+1 574 234 5527

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