[lojban] Re: Initial impression

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Sunday 03 January 2010 05:55:39 Klaus F. Abel wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> A happy new year to everybody!
>
> I just discovered this site and find it really exciting. As a computer
> programmer, the idea of a completely parseable human language sounds
> ingenious. I'll definitely want to learn more about Lojban.
>
> My native language is German, I'm fluent in English and Esperanto, have
> basic knowledge in French, Spanish, Finnish, Russian, and got just a taste
> of Chinese.
>
>  From an initial impression, regarding the chapter on alternative
> orthographies, it appears to me that development of Lojban is still in
> flux. Is that correct?
>
> If yes, I hope it's not a complete heresy to sound off a few spontaneous
> dislikes which might put some people off getting friendly with it.
>
> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the
> development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field
> of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial
> judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image.

I use question marks as punctuation, and also quotation marks (though I'm not 
sure whether to put the quotation marks inside or outside the quotation 
words). I use the hyphen for abbreviation and the comma for splitting a word 
at the end of a line, since the comma indicates that there is no pause.

Some natlangs have idiosyncratic uses of punctuation marks. Biblical Hebrew, 
as pointed by Masoretes, uses just one punctuation mark and an assortment of 
cantillation marks which show the intonation of a sentence. Armenian uses ":" 
for a period and "." for a colon, and instead of putting a question mark at 
the end of a sentence, it puts a curlicue on top of the question word. Greek 
uses ";" as a question mark.

> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound,
> what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is
> otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater

The sound /h/ behaves unlike other consonants in Lojban. It occurs only 
between vowels. A short rafsi has three letters, not counting the apostrophe.

> 3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark
> the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't
> write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it
> which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it
> uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise
> disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.

Polynesian languages write the glottal stop with the okina, which looks like 
an upside-down apostrophe.

> 4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals
> that do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its
> place. This would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q'
> depending on its position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.

Not unambiguous. "naqe" could be "na.e", which means "not ... but ...", 
or "na'e", which means "other than".

The thing about Lojban orthography that looks strangest to me is the capital 
letters for stress. I think that accented letters look better. That the 
orthography was devised before Unicode is, I think, the explanation for using 
caps.

Pierre

-- 
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.


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