Re: [lojban] Re: ZOI and culture neutrality

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 7/8/06, Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:
> Point of opinion: Lojban writers should always have the freedom to
> insert non-Lojban in such a way as that it is always pronouncable to
> someone who knows all of Lojban, but none of any other language.

I agree. But "knowing all of Lojban" involves knowing how to pronounce
the 25 Lojban phonemes, it could never involve a requirement of being
an expert in phonetics. Knowing how to read a phonetic alphabet
requires a very specialized sort of knowledge, which most speakers of
any language do not have. All you can do, in any language, when
introducing foreign words, is to adapt them to the phonology of the host
language. You can make an effort to maintain feature distinctions that
are foreign to the host language if you feel like it, but that can never be a
part of being fluent in the language. I could never become fluent in Lojban
if I had to be able to produce all the phonetic distinctions that exist in
English, for example, since some vowel distinctions that English makes
are beyond my capabilities. So the only way a writer of Lojban has of
inserting non-Lojban in such a way that they are sure it will be pronounceable
by any fluent Lojban speaker is to adapt the non-Lojban to the phonology
of Lojban. ZOI gives them the possibility of inserting non-Lojbanic distinctions
if they please, but no guarantee that they will be understood by all fluent
Lojban speakers.

(For any Lojban phoneticians, the most convenient alphabet to use today
is probably the IPA alphabet, but there is nothing to prevent some future
Association of Lojban Phoneticians to design and use some other alphabet
that they find more suitable. But that alphabet could never become a part
of what you need to know to be an ordinary fluent speaker of Lojban.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes