Lee Daniel Crocker:
But then we couldn't transliterate a Texas accent, where "yu"
is the standard pronunciation of "o", or parts of New York
where "yi" is the local version of "oi".
No, but we are not supposed to be able to transliterate
every accent of every language into Lojban.
Craig:
I pronounce "maiky'elsem" as [majk@helsem] because that's how it was
intended to be said. Similarly, Hawai'ian has [r] and [l] as free
allophones
of /l/, though most people use [l]. Yet in borrowed words, you hear more r
sounds when that fits the original sound, such as [?arani] for /'alani/
"orange".
If that is the case, then /r/ and /l/ are on their way to not
being free allophones anymore. I wouldn't expect the various
pronunciations of "'" to be realized by the same speaker, and
certainly not in fixed selected words. That would make them
different phonemes for that speaker, wouldn't it?
Jordan DeLong:
Why not "timosis"? s sounds closer to th than t.
That's certainly possible. My preference is simply because
that's what Spanish would do (compare with Spanish "Timoteo"),
but "timosis" works in Lojban too.