Re: [lojban] Uses of 'y'

[Pierre Abbat <phma@oltronics.net>]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Avital Oliver wrote:
>As I understood, 'y' is used only between rafsi in a lujvo, where without
>using 'y', there would be an illegal consonant cluster. Also, as I
>understand, any consonant cluster which is not 'easy' to pronounce may
>have a 'short un-Lojbanic' vowel in between. If this is true, why is there
>a real need for 'y'? Why can't people just implicitly add 'y', without
>there being a formal letter for 'y'?

There are consonant clusters that are hard for a monolingual jbojbe (of which
there aren't any in reality, I'm talking about the inhabitants of la lojbangug
noi xanri) to pronounce, such as "bk", and there are clusters that occur in
Lojban that are hard for foreigners to pronounce, such as "jb". Jbojbe don't
use buffer vowels. It is foreigners who use them.

Sometimes a lujvo has 'y' where the cluster is legal. For instance,
"ricypudyxrula" (orchard flower) has one; without it, it could be misunderstood
as "ri cpudyxrula", which is meaningless, but since the language is designed to
be lexed unambiguously we put it in anyway.

'y' also occurs in names, and may be put in because there is a sound in a
foreign language that a jbojbe finds hard to pronounce. For instance, Abkhaz
and other Caucasian languages have huge inventories of consonants and clusters,
but Lojban doesn't, so we say "abyxaz".

phma