[lojban] Re: [hobyrne@gmail.com: Alphabet]

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yay!  I'm on the list now.  I can defend my message!

coi xius
 
> 
> On with the show.
> 
> komfo,amonan wrote:
> >      >
> >     You should know that VS is not unique in this, though it may be one of
> >     the more developed and consistent such systems.  I *think* there is some
> >     basis to the claim that hangul is a featural script like this, and
> >     certainly Tolkien's tengwar is.  
> > 
> >  You can read about the featural properties of Hangul here: < 
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Jamo_design 
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Jamo_design> >
> 
> It looks as if Hangul is featural.  It doesn't look as nice, at first
> glance, but I'll study it too.
> 
> Of course, Tengwar.  I knew that.  I like Tengwar, a lot.  Thoughtfully
> constructed by a great linguist.
> 
> But I like VS more.  It appears, to me, to be more complete, more regular.

Well, Hangul is designed to serve one language, VS is meant to be able to represent all (or a
significant portion of all) languages.  It is thus more complete in the sense of covering more
possibilities, including those not found in some particular language.  This means, of course, that
it includes a lot of stuff that any particular language does not need.  It is consequently not so
useful for a particular language (internally, not for explaining to someone outside).  For
example, it has two sets of velars, which, while phonemic isn some languages are not in Lojban. 
The distinction has, therefore to be ignored â?? somehow â?? for use in Lojban (either opting for
one â?? which is inaccurate in some places â?? or dropping the distinctive features involved,
which means in effect not using VS).  As for regularity, in its area I donâ??t see how Hangul
could be more systematic (what I take â??regularâ?? to mean).  It is not iconic any more or less
than VS.

> >     And tengwar suffers from the same
> >     problem that VS does: all the letters are related and formed in neat
> >     logical ways... which means that they all look alike!!  Reading tengwar
> >     takes a lot of practice, because all the letters look more or less
> >     alike.  Think how much trouble dyslexics (and even non-dyslexics) have
> >     with d,b,p,q.  Now imagine that the *entire alphabet* was like that.
> 
> Dyslexia... a very good point which I hadn't even considered.
> 
> I'm glad you brought it to my attention.  I shall have to sleep on this.
>   I may write more on this point later.  The glib answer would be that
> Lojban is more difficult for people who have trouble making formal
> logical associations, and that's part of the intentional design of the
> language.  It is *good* that the grammar is logical, even at the cost of
> making it difficult.  To make it more difficult for people who have
> trouble with spatial aspects of symbols, with the benefit of making the
> alphabet more logical, seems in keeping with that Lojban philosophy.
> It's not *meant* to be easy, as much as it's meant to be *good*.  It's 
> meant to be clean, and logical.  I'm not too comfortable with this 
> answer, though, because it makes Lojban (or at least my vision of it) 
> appear terribly elitist.

(screed on â??logicalâ??) Lojban is logical in the sense that its grammar is based upon Applied
First-Order Predicate Logic.  Consequences of this include that arguments are more transparent
than in ordinary language and that the surface forms of sentences are less remote from the deep
structures.  Any other sense of â??logicalâ?? applied to Lojban needs to be rephrased in some
other terms to be evaluated.  The prima facie evaluation under â??logicalâ?? is that it does not
apply.  Beyond that (and, indeed, including that) Lojban is *meant* to be easy (how well it
succeeds is another issue).  Lojban has been stripped of all the froo-froos (tense, cases, etc.)
of natural languages, completely regularized (and, so simplified).  Even the vocabulary is meant
to be recognizable by most literate speakers (speakers of the major languages) because the words
(the gismu at least) are partially familiar.  

> 
> This (to my mind) is the most significant argument against VS so far.
> 
> BTW, The word 'dyslexic' makes *me* feel dyslexic.  I have this nagging
> feeling in the pit of my stomach that it should be 'dislexic'.  That 'y' 
> just seems *wrong*. :)

The â??dys-â??, like â??lexicâ?? is from Greek, â??dis-â?? is Latin.  They also work in slightly
different ways (though they are related).  â??dis-â?? typically points to the opposite of some
existing term, â??dys-â?? modifys some term of activity to say it is done badly (as opposed to
â??eu-â?? for doing it well). So, â??dyslexiaâ?? is doing lexia badly, not doing the opposite of
lexia.
 
> >     (Want to mess yourself up?  Take a text and have the computer replace
> >     every [dbpq] with a *random* character from [dbpq].  Then try to read
> >     it).
> 
> I'm not sure what you're trying to express here.  Take a text and have
> the computer replace every [aeio] with a random character from [aeio],
> then try to read it.  Pick *any* four (relatively common) letters.  Pick
> 7.8% (approx. frequency of [dbpq] combined) of the letters in the text
> randomly, and shuffle them.  A demonstration only statistically
> demonstrates something when there are control cases too.

Messing with the vowels is much less disastrous than with the consonants.  Indeed, we can
generally read fairly well passages in which the vowels are missing altogether, clearly not the
case with consonants.  Consonants form the core of word Gestalts and we generally (once fully
literate) see Gestalts rather than letter strings (English â?? indeed all written languages â??
are more like Chinese than we at first notice).

> >  I recall also Herman Miller has a phonetic alphabet called Lhoerr
> >     or something like that which is similarly featural, rather like VS in
> >     philosophy though not in actual design.
> 
> Lhoerr does seem to be closer to Visible Speech than Hangul.  And it
> uses a wider set of features on the symbols, which goes some way toward
> addressing the "all letters look alike" argument.  Thanks!  You've
> helped me (at least, partially) deflect the biggest argument against the
> idea!  I like the look of it, I like it quite a bit; I'll investigate
> some more.

Lhoerr apprears to be as arbitrary as VS and not to have any real advantages over it.

> >     The other thing, though, is that Lojban in particular doesn't *need*
> >     VS.
> 
> The issue of *need* is addressed in another post.
> 
> >  It is the non-solution to a non-problem in Lojban.
> 
> You don't see a problem.  I do.  I guess we'll just have to agree to differ.

You do apparently have a problem.  You have an aesthetic which finds the use of the Latin alphabet
for Lojban  unappealing.  But that is your problem, not Lojbanâ??s or Lojbanistsâ??. 
> And VS *is* an (at least partial) solution to the problem I see (Lhoerr
> very possibly being even better).
> 
> Well, maybe 'problem' isn't the right word for it.  Room for improvement
> along the philosophy that generated Lojban in the first place.  Isn't
> that worth aiming for?

But how does this accord with Lojbanâ??s philosophy.  Applying the principles that went into
Lojbanâ??s construction would lead to using the Latin alphabet as the one familiar to the most
people (indeed all literate cultures in varying degrees).  This corresponds to the rule behind
gismu construction and the general idea of ease of learning.
  
> >  In *English* it
> >     would fill a need: English's writing system is a mess, and it's insanely
> >     complex to deduce how to pronounce an unfamiliar word in general.  It
> >     also would be useful for the same purposes that we use the International
> >     Phonetic Alphabet. 

Actually figuring out how to pronounce an English word is a snap compared to figuring out how to
spell it (we donâ??t have pronunciation bees, after all).  But English is spoken in an enormous
number of dialects and it is generally thought that it is better that all speakers spell their
words more or less the same way than that each spells â??em like they says â??em, thus spreading
the impaired intelligibility around in another medium (cf. the problem with similar letters for
similar sounds).  English could use some work, to be sure, but it is not nearly as bad as
reformers like to make out â?? and the details are relatively unimportant anyhow, given that we
donâ??t read letter by letter.

>> But Lojban's writing is phonemic already.  The
> >     symbols are more or less arbitrary (though strangely familiar to huge
> >     chunks of the literate world), but in order to learn to read with any
> >     fluency you have to learn the symbols iconically, not as collections of
> >     features, so you'd have to learn the VS symbols as if they were
> >     arbitrary too.  And once you have your 25-odd symbols learned, there's
> >     no advantage to using VS.
> 
> The symbols are arbitrary.  They don't have to be (at least, on such a 
> high level).  That's my point.

But VS symbols are arbitrary at a very basic level â?? the way they represent features.  Given the
representation rules, they become systematic.  The Latin alphabet leaves out this lower level and
represents sounds arbitrarily directly.  It is  thus the simpler system (26 arbitrary connections
versus several dozen arbitrary connections and then calculating what the combination means).

> Stating that familiarity with the symbols is an advantage is dubious to
> me.  More in another post.

Not from the Lojban philosophy.

>  In summary:  I am *so* familiar with the 'o'
> symbol, I was pronouncing the beginning of the word 'Lojban' like
> 'logic', even after I had read and practised the alphabet out loud half
> a dozen times, even after I had used the correct 'o' sound in the middle
> of other Lojban words.  I doubt I was the only one to do this.  Because
> of familiarity.  (I was very embarrassed when I heard it pronounced
> correctly the first time.  I had been telling friends and family about
> this wonderful language, when I hadn't even been saying the name of the
> language properly.)

>  well, depending upon what â??oâ?? you use, it might be acceptable, since Lojban vowels cover
fairly broad areas (I suspect you use the one like Lojban â??aâ?? and that would not work).
  
> Learning the symbols iconically, yes, that probably is a necessity for
> most people.  But the process of learning will be more structured
> because of its regularity.  The goal is not so the majority of people
> don't have to learn something new; in fact, quite the opposite, part of
> the point is so that people *do* learn something new and fun, right? 
> And that learning is in a well-ordered, structured environment.
> 
> >     It's a nifty alphabet, but it doesn't seem to me to add anything to
> >     Lojban.  Lojban may add something to IT, though, since it can discuss
> >     features unambiguously...
> 
> It doesn't add to the language of Lojban, no (at least, not 
> immediately).  It adds to the culture.  It embodies (what I see as) the 
> ideal of Lojban.  It expresses the philosophy.  It supports Lojban.

I donâ??t see what relevant it adds to Lojban culture.  Lojban is not interested in teaching the
deaf (or anyone else) to speak plainly and that is the sole real use of VS.

> > I agree with Mark here. It sounds like Mr O'Byrne's objection to use of 
> > the Roman alphabet for Lojban is down to its 1) illogicality and 2) 
> > cultural bias. Understandable.

Not obviously.  It is not clear in what sense the Latin alphabet is illogical (and some other
logical) and the Latin alphabet is the de facto universal alphabet, cutting across most cultural
lines â?? at least for government work, but also for advertising and, of course, computer use.

> Right, thanks.
> 
> > But it seems that we don't think in terms of phonemes when we read. I 
> > don't reckon that the idea that /n/ is a nasal /d/ helps a reader very 
> > much and in fact it may hinder understanding. In situations where the 
> > minimal pairs lack a connection in their meanings ( e.g. {na}/{da}, 
> > {po}/{bo}), there's not much advantage to expressing the phonemic 
> > connection in the writing system.
> 
> Maybe you don't think in terms of phonemes when you read the Latin
> alphabet.  You don't think as much in terms of predicates when you read
> English, do you?  Isn't one of the important goals of Lojban to open the 
> mind to new ways of thinking?  Logical, structured representations?

Huh?  The structure is just another, more complex, arbitrary association.  And, of course,
â??logicalâ?? here is just a positive word without content (as yet, anyhow).
 
> > When I learned hangul, I did so without knowing about its featural 
> > properties. And I think if I had, it would have slowed me down as I 
> > would struggle to figure out each letter according to the system rather 
> > than memorize them individually.
> 
> Granted, I could imagine that the learning process might be slower. 
> Counterpoints:  First, Hangul does not seem as well structured as VS, so 
> VS should be easier.  Second, if you *had* learned Hangul by its 
> featural aspects (and if it really is as expressive as VS), you would 
> not only have learned an alphabet, but you would have learned more about 
> the workings of your own mouth and voice.  This is information you can 
> use and apply when learning *any* new language from then on.  Bonus!

 How is this relevant to anything in Lojban?

> > That being said, hangul could be adapted for Lojban quite easily (in 
> > contravention to statements made at lojban.org <http://lojban.org>); 
> > it's adapting that system for use on computers that would be hard \(>-^)/
> > 
> > mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan
> 
> Alphabets such as VS and Lhoerr teach a different way (a more
> structured, logical way) 
Brap!
> to think about how we speak, and represent
> speech.  How can anyone think they're *not* appropriate for Lojban?!
> It's at a lower level, closer to the physical interface than the
> information-bearing higher-level protocols, but it's *entirely* the
> spirit of Lojban.

Itâ??s easy to think they are not appropriate to Lojban since they violate a basic design
principle.  It thus is entirely the opposite of the spirit of Lojban.  A course in Lojban history
seems called for.

> Also, Lojban has a mechanism for expressing words in foreign languages.
>   But because of the limited number of phonemes, and the fact that the
> phonemes of Lojban do not match phonemes of other languages exactly,
> they can't be properly expressed in the Lojban alphabet.  VS/Lhoerr
> needn't be used in its entirety to write basic Lojban, just pick the
> symbols of the existing phonemes.  But it has the *capability* of
> expressing foreign words with foreign sounds without going outside of
> the system.

Lojban expresses foreign words as much as possible in Lojbanic phonology; it does not need â?? nor
want â?? a more accurate representation.

> Summary:
> 
> Advantages of Latin alphabet:
> * Fewer people will have to learn the symbol set (familiarity with the
> symbols, which I consider a disadvantage).

But Lojban calls an advantage.
 
> Disadvantages of Latin alphabet:
> * Deeply ingrained associations many people in the world already have
> with the symbols, inconsistent both globally and individually
> (familiarity, which some consider an advantage).

But the differences are relatively small and easily compensated for: see how quickly an English
speaker learns Pinyin.

> * If you are unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet, there is no way to
> learn it except by memorizing all the arbitrary symbol-sound associations.

Which are fewer and simpler than the articulatory rules of VS etc.

> * Less expressive for foreign sounds.

Not a problem, since we are not learning those foreign sounds.

> Advantages of VS/Lhoerr:
> * It is structured, logical, and consistent; entirely in tune with the
> philosophy of Lojban.

I donâ??t see any part of Lojbanâ??s â??philosophyâ?? that belnds well with this system, which is
arbitrary and illogical (if xuis can use empty words, I can use theor equally empty opposites).

> * If you are unfamiliar with the alphabet, you can choose to learn all
> the associations straight off the block just like Latin, *or* you can
> choose to learn the fundamentals (granted, arbitrary, but at least
> expressing something more fundamental about the sound, so there are
> fewer components for more expressiveness) and work from first principles.

I.e, you can learn it just as easily as the Latin â?? which you already know â?? or you can learn
a much more complex set of associations to do the work of the Latin alphabet â?? which you already
know.

> * It teaches some physical aspects of speech.  This could be an
> advantage to some people who have difficulty elocuting.

And this is relevant to Lojban how?

> * More expressive for foreign sounds.  (But the 'core' symbol set used
> in regular day-to-day Lojban still need not be ridiculously large.)

Relevance?

> * Written-spoken isomorphism (which some consider a disadvantage).

More just an irrelevancy.

> * It's fun to learn something new.  Isn't that why we're learning Lojban
> in the first place?

Well, no â??at least for some of us.

> Disadvantages of VS/Lhoerr:
> * More people will have to learn the symbol set.  (Not a major point,
> IMHO.  People all around the world are about equally *capable* of
> learning VS/Lhoerr.  This seems to be to be a more important long-term 
> goal.)

But the added work for no gain is a negative factor: we know the Latin alphabet or, if not, it is
easier to learn than VS.

> * Written-spoken isomorphism (which I consider an advantage, a direct
> extension of the 'phonemic representation' ideal, which is already
> agreed to be an advantage).

Relevance?

> * Meaning, encoded in slight geometrical features on symbols, can be
> difficult for people not sensitive to such geometries to detect and
> process correctly.  This one, I may not be able to wangle my way out of.
>   I shall have to ponder...
> 
> My bias is obvious.  Anyone care to add to this table?
> 
> mi'e .xius.
> 
> 



--- Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:

> John E Clifford wrote:
> > Nah!  The wikipedia contains a contemporary review which still applies nearly 150 years later.
> 
> > The analysis is faulty (though Bell Jr corrected some of it).The so-called representationalism
> is
> > largely arbitrary -- better than the Just-So stories but nothing to help a trained
> articulatory
> > phonologist.
> 
> Granted, the representationalism in the symbols *is* fairly arbitrary at
> its lowest level, as are the modifiers to those symbols.  But the
> compound symbols (which are most of the letters) are consistent, logical
> applications of those modifiers to the base symbols.  As such, it is
> clearly superior to the Latin alphabet in that respect.  And consistency
> and logic are respects that are valued highly in Lojbanistan, as I
> understand.

As usual, â??logicalâ?? here adds nothing to the tale â?? at least so far.  The rules are
consistently applied â?? for the most part, but the analyses are in several cases faulty.  And
learning the rules and calculating out the effects of their applications is a much more complex
task than just applying the correlations given directly by the Latin forms.  To be sure, this
complexity is largely irrelevant (except that it keeps being offered as an advantage), since we
will use the symbols much the way we use the Latin ones, without recalculating each time.  But in
that case, why change from the ones we know to another we know not (and which are even harder to
deal with than the familiar ones).

> And VS is *considerably* better than the Just-So stories alphabet.
> There's hardly a comparison.  In the story, there are very few modifiers
> to existing symbols, mostly new made-up symbols even where there were
> parallels to previous sounds to guide in consistent creation of new
> symbols.  And what modifiers there are, aren't even applied in
> consistent ways.  VS is *very* different from that.

Not sure what story you are thinking of.  The one I remember derives the Latin alphabet from
various â?? arbitrarily uisolated â?? features of articulation: very much like VS then.  There are
no modifications of existing symbols, merely an etiological myth about those symbols.

> "... nothing to help a trained articulatory phonologist".  Is that the
> target audience of Lojban?  Or, putting that idea on its head, do you
> think a trained articulatory phonologist has nothing to contribute to
> improving the design of an artificial spoken language?  I, obviously,
> think that they could contribute.  I think we should take advantage of
> the insights of such people.

I think that a trained phonologist could offer a lot of improvements for artifical languages in
general and Lojban in particular.  That has nothing to do with VS, however (it is about best use
of pronunciation space and word space).  My point was just that the symbols in VS are in no sense
â??naturalâ?? symbols for the articulatory mechanism, so that one could read off the articulation
from the symbols without considerable training in the rules of the representation system.
 
> In this respect, Lojban will not educate a linguist, but an educated
> linguist can help in the formulation of Lojban.
> 
> > And (not mentioned) the fact that similar sounds are represented by similar
> > characters merely carries over into writing the common confusions in speech (not a desirable
> > written-spoken isomorphism).
> 
> I did mention it in my original post, or at least I tried to, with my
> 'b' 'd' 'g' example.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree.  I'd be interested to hear more about how you come
> to this conclusion.  Written-spoken isomorphism is *very* desirable.
> It's the very reason Lojban has a phonemic alphabet.  It is desirable to
> as much and as precise a degree as possible.

My point is just that, if we confuse two related sounds in the speech stream because they are
similar, it is not an advantage to have them also easily confused in the letter stream by making
them similar again.  One use of writing is exactly to overcome speech confusions.
 
> Confusions occur both in speech and text.  Would it be better for these
> confusions to be unrelated, independent?  Put it this way:  If you see a
> word that is obviously misspelled, what do you do?  You vocalize it in
> your mind, think ov words that sound the same, and see if they fit into
> the sentence properly.  You go from the visual to the auditory world.
> Phonemic spelling makes that transition easier.  But VS makes the
> transition entirely unnecessary: a misspelling of that nature in VS can
> be analyzed in that fashion entirely in the visual world.  Assuming
> you're not deaf, maybe not a big deal to you, 'v' and 'f' being very
> different symbols are still closely related in your mind, but perhaps to
> a deaf person, having the symbols for 'v' and 'f' be similar as the
> sounds are similar might make the job a bit easier.

I am not sure your description of what happens is accurate, but even supposing it is, it does not
answer to the problem I was referring to.  It does raise another though (not applicable to Lojban,
which has no homonyms): we convert all the homophones into homoglyphs so little is gained in the
way of intelligibility (though the old homoglyphs will by and large disappear â?? sometimes into
new ones, like the â??readâ??s. My problemwas, remember, that the easily confused speech forms are
now represented by easily confused written forms, importing into the writing a kind of confusion
that was less present before (p, b, d, q and g are less easily confused in speech than in writing,
though are somewhat).


> In fact, changing 'of' to 'ov' brings up so many more issues than just
> that, so it's probably not as good an example as I'd like it to be.  But
> it demonstrates a transition from the visual to the auditory that can be
> done away with using VS.

 Only in the sense that â??ovâ?? in the new system would not be a misspelling (for some people);
the confusion with â??â?? veâ?? now appears in writing as well as speech.

> Further, when reading a handwritten page, the mind automatically fills
> in meaning where there are smudges, or slightly askew lines, stuff like
> that.  That very same mechanism will work in favour of making slight
> transcription errors more easily understandable.

As indeed they now do (witness reading my typing).  The whole issue of handwriting is an
interesting one: what would a running script that kept all the relevant features of VS look like? 
Is it feasible at all? It is bound to be slower than our present hand in any case.  Again,
however, it worls by Gestalt â?? why reading an unfamiliar hand is so hard at first, until you get
the correspondences down (going back to learning to read in effect).
 
> There are some fun jokes that involve expressing visual puns verbally,
> or more commonly, verbal puns visually.  They're so much fun because
> they're delayed-reaction jokes, it takes a second (or a day) to 'get'
> it.  VS will pretty much kill those kinds of jokes.  What is a verbal
> pun, is a visual pun (or is more likely to be perceived as bad
> transcription).  I enjoy those jokes.  But they are, fundamentally,
> misunderstandings and misrepresentations.  They don't belong in Lojban.

And are virtually impossible in Lojban already, as those who have tried them have found.  There
are a few metAathesis jokes but that is about all.

> >  And it turns out that even more characters are only minutely
> > different than there are easily confused sounds.
> 
> This is true.  It is a weakness of VS.  Mark E. Shoulson has pointed me
> to the Lhoerr alphabet, it seems to be far superior in that respect.  I
> may change the direction of my crusade, from VS to Lhoerr.  For now, the
> very name Visual Speech expresses the idea I'm championing, so I'll use
> it as a token of my goal, though it may not be the actual destination.
> 
> >  And to no point: Lojban (nor English) doesn't
> > need a way to represent every conceivable human sound, just a consistent way to represent the
> ones
> > in the language
> 
> Which is why I suggested only a subset of the alphabet may be all that's
> required, or even desired.
> 
> As to *need*:  The Latin alphabet *is* all you need to represent Lojban,
> it's true.  And it has the dubious advantage of being familiar to many
> people in the world (more on that later).  But then, English is all you
> *need* for anything you'd want to say in Lojban, and it is also familiar
> to many people in the world.  Lojban is not about stopping at mere need,
> otherwise it wouldn't exist.  No, Lojban doesn't *need* VS.  The world
> doesn't need Lojban.  But the world *has* Lojban, because people were
> (and still are) enamoured with ideas such as creating a useful,
> culture-neutral communication system.

It is not clear that anyone really wants this nor that it is a reason why someone learns Lojban
(and it is even less clear that Lojban is culturally neutral in any relevant sense).


>  I think we can all agree that the
> world is a better place (at least a more fun place, or a more mentally
> stimulating place, for us personally) for having Lojban.  I happen to
> think Lojban would be a better language for having an alphabet such as
> VS (or Lhoerr).



Ou would like it better.  How would it *be* better?

> I'm not interested in Lojban because of *need*.  I think it's *fun*!
> 
> As to 'a consistent way to represent the [sounds] in the language":  VS
> is a symbol set that has a couple of *levels* of consistency, _within_
> its representations of sounds, whereas the current Lojban alphabet is
> just a set with no more meaning or depth than its superficial arbitrary
> definition. 

What relevant advantage does these purported deep consistencies offer.  Just having some
consistencies is not a reason for introducing something to Lojban, especially if it makes things
more complex in the process.  And consistency seems to be all that VS has to offer.

>VS is simply better at *being* 'a consistent way to
> represent sounds'.  The Latin alphabet is only barely adequate, its only
> claim to being anything more than completely arbitrary is its
> 'familiarity' to a large portion of the world, which I address in 
> another post.  I prefer a usefully structured, tiered system over an 
> arbitrary, flat one.

But that familiarity is just what recommends it to Lojban (Lojban could have a much nicer set of
gismu for a number of of purposes if we did not want them to be familiar to most speakers, but
that familiarity is a design feature).  

> > (and English doesn't even want that, since, like Chinese, it is probably more
> > important that all English speakers spell things pretty much the same way than that they spell
> 
> > 'em like they say 'em -- or we reproduce another kind of spoken mess).
> 
> Irrelavent to the subject at hand.

Was a response to someone talking about English spelling reform, so relevant to the context but
that context was indeed irrelevant to whether to use VS in Lojban, which is not English and
already has a â??perfectâ?? spelling system.

> >  To be sure, the Latin
> > alphabet could be improved for various purposes  -- make characters more different, for
> example --
> > but this is not the way to go.
> 
> This is actually the kind of thinking that first intrigued me, and led
> me to discover such things as linguistics, the IPA, and Lojban.  I agree
> that modifying an existing set of symbols is not the way to go.  A fresh
> start is needed.  Lojban appeared to me like fresh enough ground that
> the idea of an improved alphabet might take root.  Perhaps I'm just too
> late - I should have put this idea in at the very beginning of the
> Lojban project, except I didn't even know about it (or VS) at that time.
>   Has Lojbanistan ground gotten so stale already?

I take these comments about not modifying an existing system to apply to VS (a century and a half
old) as well as the Latin alphabet.  But (as noted several times) new alphabets never had a chance
for Lojban, because they were unfamiliar to most people (and, believe me, people have proposed
other alphabets â?? especially Tengwar â?? from the get-go and have devised quite a number of
totally new forms, many based on the same unfortunate principles as VS â?? at least to the
similarity of characters for similar sounds).  They have all been rejected despite a good deal of
pleading in their behalf.  And some of them were actually pretty and had other virtues.

> mi'e .xius.
>



To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.