Re: [lojban] Re: [hobyrne: Alphabet]

["Matt Arnold" <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

Hugh,

Thanks for your contribution!

Certainly, if anyone wishes to write Lojban in the Visual Speech
alphabet, nothing is stopping them. It would not really be a change to
the language itself. I myself wish to write Lojban in VS from time to
time when creating webcomics, Lojbanimations, and other artistic
pursuits in which characters live in a Lojban-speaking culture. It's
fun and attractive and cool. This would be a great visual addition to
the worldbuilding of a "Lojban-born" setting.

The question is, should it be made mandatory so that others, by virtue
of knowing Lojban, will be able to read your Lojban when you do so? On
balance, I think not, for several reasons.

Keyboards, email clients, web browsers, IM clients, and IRC chatrooms
are not set up to use the character set.

In order to have someone to communicate to in Lojban, we need people
to learn the language. So it's good to prevent an overwhelming number
of simultaneous barriers to learning. They can always learn Lojban in
the Latin alphabet and graduate to using VS if that practice catches
on.

A big way in which auxlangs and loglangs differ from artlangs (such as
Tolkien or Klingon) is that idealism doesn't apply to artlangs. You
just ask the inventor of an artlang a question, and that settles it.
But in auxlangs/loglangs, the only standard against which to measure
success in its creation is reality itself, in which much less can ever
be dogmatically settled. So the participants, starting from a blank
slate, feel like they have a chance to create Perfection. This is
where they start quibbling over details and making mountains out of
molehills-- an endless pursuit of greater and greater perfection. Then
they are unable to speak to each other in their split-off variations
of the language. This ironically flies in the face of the nature and
purpose of language, as a participatory activity.

Hence my stance toward the language I ultimately chose to learn,
Lojban, has been to embrace it -- warts and all -- because it's better
for my purposes than a language that doesn't even attempt its goals.
Consider that. I encourage you to adopt that attitude and you will be
happier and find more success. Many of us will enjoy using VS with
you, but it will never become the standard.

-epkat


On 6/30/06, Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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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