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[lojban] Re: pronouncing ‘ as th



Pierre Abbat wrote:

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/.

Right. I can't imagine what sort of accent or dialect would find þ easier than h. It's hard enough for me to comprehend spoken Lojban; this modification would make it even more difficult.

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.


Untrilled r tends to pollute the following vowel.


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"The war was supposed to be quick. We were supposed to be greeted as liberators. It was to pay for itself with oil revenues. And we were supposed to find chemical and biological weapons."
Col. Sam Gardiner USAF-retired, National Defense University