Re: [hobyrne@gmail.com: Alphabet]

[Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com>]

John E Clifford wrote:
> Nah!  The wikipedia contains a contemporary review which still applies nearly 150 years later. 
> The analysis is faulty (though Bell Jr corrected some of it).The so-called representationalism is
> largely arbitrary -- better than the Just-So stories but nothing to help a trained articulatory
> phonologist.

Granted, the representationalism in the symbols *is* fairly arbitrary at
its lowest level, as are the modifiers to those symbols.  But the
compound symbols (which are most of the letters) are consistent, logical
applications of those modifiers to the base symbols.  As such, it is
clearly superior to the Latin alphabet in that respect.  And consistency
and logic are respects that are valued highly in Lojbanistan, as I
understand.

And VS is *considerably* better than the Just-So stories alphabet.
There's hardly a comparison.  In the story, there are very few modifiers
to existing symbols, mostly new made-up symbols even where there were
parallels to previous sounds to guide in consistent creation of new
symbols.  And what modifiers there are, aren't even applied in
consistent ways.  VS is *very* different from that.

"... nothing to help a trained articulatory phonologist".  Is that the
target audience of Lojban?  Or, putting that idea on its head, do you
think a trained articulatory phonologist has nothing to contribute to
improving the design of an artificial spoken language?  I, obviously,
think that they could contribute.  I think we should take advantage of
the insights of such people.

In this respect, Lojban will not educate a linguist, but an educated
linguist can help in the formulation of Lojban.

> And (not mentioned) the fact that similar sounds are represented by similar
> characters merely carries over into writing the common confusions in speech (not a desirable
> written-spoken isomorphism).

I did mention it in my original post, or at least I tried to, with my
'b' 'd' 'g' example.

I'm not sure I agree.  I'd be interested to hear more about how you come
to this conclusion.  Written-spoken isomorphism is *very* desirable.
It's the very reason Lojban has a phonemic alphabet.  It is desirable to
as much and as precise a degree as possible.

Confusions occur both in speech and text.  Would it be better for these
confusions to be unrelated, independent?  Put it this way:  If you see a
word that is obviously misspelled, what do you do?  You vocalize it in
your mind, think ov words that sound the same, and see if they fit into
the sentence properly.  You go from the visual to the auditory world.
Phonemic spelling makes that transition easier.  But VS makes the
transition entirely unnecessary: a misspelling of that nature in VS can
be analyzed in that fashion entirely in the visual world.  Assuming
you're not deaf, maybe not a big deal to you, 'v' and 'f' being very
different symbols are still closely related in your mind, but perhaps to
a deaf person, having the symbols for 'v' and 'f' be similar as the
sounds are similar might make the job a bit easier.

In fact, changing 'of' to 'ov' brings up so many more issues than just
that, so it's probably not as good an example as I'd like it to be.  But
it demonstrates a transition from the visual to the auditory that can be
done away with using VS.

Further, when reading a handwritten page, the mind automatically fills
in meaning where there are smudges, or slightly askew lines, stuff like
that.  That very same mechanism will work in favour of making slight
transcription errors more easily understandable.

There are some fun jokes that involve expressing visual puns verbally,
or more commonly, verbal puns visually.  They're so much fun because
they're delayed-reaction jokes, it takes a second (or a day) to 'get'
it.  VS will pretty much kill those kinds of jokes.  What is a verbal
pun, is a visual pun (or is more likely to be perceived as bad
transcription).  I enjoy those jokes.  But they are, fundamentally,
misunderstandings and misrepresentations.  They don't belong in Lojban.

>  And it turns out that even more characters are only minutely
> different than there are easily confused sounds.

This is true.  It is a weakness of VS.  Mark E. Shoulson has pointed me
to the Lhoerr alphabet, it seems to be far superior in that respect.  I
may change the direction of my crusade, from VS to Lhoerr.  For now, the
very name Visual Speech expresses the idea I'm championing, so I'll use
it as a token of my goal, though it may not be the actual destination.

>  And to no point: Lojban (nor English) doesn't
> need a way to represent every conceivable human sound, just a consistent way to represent the ones
> in the language

Which is why I suggested only a subset of the alphabet may be all that's
required, or even desired.

As to *need*:  The Latin alphabet *is* all you need to represent Lojban,
it's true.  And it has the dubious advantage of being familiar to many
people in the world (more on that later).  But then, English is all you
*need* for anything you'd want to say in Lojban, and it is also familiar
to many people in the world.  Lojban is not about stopping at mere need,
otherwise it wouldn't exist.  No, Lojban doesn't *need* VS.  The world
doesn't need Lojban.  But the world *has* Lojban, because people were
(and still are) enamoured with ideas such as creating a useful,
culture-neutral communication system.  I think we can all agree that the
world is a better place (at least a more fun place, or a more mentally
stimulating place, for us personally) for having Lojban.  I happen to
think Lojban would be a better language for having an alphabet such as
VS (or Lhoerr).

I'm not interested in Lojban because of *need*.  I think it's *fun*!

As to 'a consistent way to represent the [sounds] in the language":  VS
is a symbol set that has a couple of *levels* of consistency, _within_
its representations of sounds, whereas the current Lojban alphabet is
just a set with no more meaning or depth than its superficial arbitrary
definition.  VS is simply better at *being* 'a consistent way to
represent sounds'.  The Latin alphabet is only barely adequate, its only
claim to being anything more than completely arbitrary is its
'familiarity' to a large portion of the world, which I address in 
another post.  I prefer a usefully structured, tiered system over an 
arbitrary, flat one.

> (and English doesn't even want that, since, like Chinese, it is probably more
> important that all English speakers spell things pretty much the same way than that they spell 
> 'em like they say 'em -- or we reproduce another kind of spoken mess).

Irrelavent to the subject at hand.

>  To be sure, the Latin
> alphabet could be improved for various purposes  -- make characters more different, for example --
> but this is not the way to go.

This is actually the kind of thinking that first intrigued me, and led
me to discover such things as linguistics, the IPA, and Lojban.  I agree
that modifying an existing set of symbols is not the way to go.  A fresh
start is needed.  Lojban appeared to me like fresh enough ground that
the idea of an improved alphabet might take root.  Perhaps I'm just too
late - I should have put this idea in at the very beginning of the
Lojban project, except I didn't even know about it (or VS) at that time.
 Has Lojbanistan ground gotten so stale already?

mi'e .xius.