Re: [lojban] pronouncing ? as th

[Pierre Abbat <phma@webjockey.net>]

On Wednesday 10 March 2004 23:40, la_okus wrote:
> The usual pronunciation of the omnipresent apostrophe has
> been described as the airy glide between the words "oh hello". I,
> as an American English speaker, find this to take too long and
> too much energy to say. The result is that ugly lujvo like ba'orzu'e
> sort of split apart and get pronounced as BA'orZU'e, being
> stressed in two places.
>
> Then I read on the wiki that .kreig.daniyl. pronounces it as `th' in
> `think'. I find that this sound can be made much more quickly,
> allowing me to zip over the "ba'o" of ba'orzu'e to make ba'orZU'e.
> As a side effect, my lojban sounds a lot more like tolkien's
> beautiful elvish languages. I realize that many people cannot
> make this sound, which is why lojban's designers did good to
> allow many alternative pronunciations. I am trying to invent some
> airy version of the `th' sound so as to minimize the weirdness
> when talking to other lojbanists.

I can pronounce /bahorzuhe/ faster than /baþorzuþe/. /h/ requires only a flick 
of the vocal cords between the vowels; /þ/ requires moving the tongue. I even 
pronounce {fu'arka} with /h/, though etymologically it should have /þ/.

> I am making this thread to ask what you all think of my decision.
> Will lojban split into an assortment of accents, and if so, won't
> this happen anyway when lojban gains more speakers outside
> the US? Mind you that the lojban r is not limited to the American
> English pronunciation, but also the trilled or french r.

I pronounce Lojban "r" as a trill, except when it's vocalic.

> PS. While I'm here, I'd like to clear up something about stress. In
> the lujvo "dadysli", is it pronounced dadYsli or DADysli? Does
> that little schwa get counted?

DAdysli. The sound /y/ is never stressed in brivla. It can be stressed in 
cmavo and cmene; I usually stress names of letters when spelling, but not as 
often when they're used as pronouns.

phma