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[lojban] Re: Aesthetics




On Samedi, déce 7, 2002, at 15:28 US/Eastern, Craig wrote:

Presumably And was indending to replace them with another letter?

Like and H or a Q, possibly pronounced like "theta"?

This would be useful in, eg, translating Twain - it allows us to spell
out
alternative pronunciations. But in normal writing, it would only be
divisive; I dislike h for ' because [h] is not an optimal pronunciation
and
/h/ pronounced [T] is just crazy.

Why is [h] not an optimal pronunciation for '?  (Yes I know the
title of the thread is 'aesthetics', but you seem to be implying
there's some kind of reason).

Because there is a greater phonic contrast between [T] and [f] or [s] than
between [h] and [x].

Of course, even [T] isn't optimal if you can pronounce certain other sounds. A Welsh ll, for example, is a lateral fricative; this is an acceptable ' sound. Since Lojban has only one lateral sound, l, which does not *need* to be pronounced laterally, the most contrasting pronunciation would be a velar
l (like in English) and a lateral '.

I use [T], but only because I can't get the ll sound.

Think of 'll' as an unvoiced 'l' and it comes pretty easily. Native Welsh speakers
have said I am doing it correctly.

Bob McIvor