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[lojban] Re: Alphabet proposal one.
On 7/10/06, robin <robin@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote:
HeliodoR wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 08:51:09PM -0300, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> > > If the CLL or the BPFK ever come to treat the question, my vote
> > > will be for it not to declare any alphabet official, since I don't
> > > really see the point of having an official alphabet.
> >
> > That would be my inclination as well.
>
> And mine. I tend to think that the "Usage will determine" plays into
> this well.
>
>
> i'e
> I share this opinion too.
.i'e I also think that in terms of cultural neutrality, "Use whichever
alphabet you want" is about as neutral as you can get!
robin.tr
I disagree for numerous reasons. "Use whichever phonemes or words that
you want" is about as neutral as you can get in those respective
domains, but it's still a stupid idea (the character-set being
analogous to the phoneme-set or word-set). There should not be two or
more competing alphabets - and soon enough there would be (assuming
the community didn't support an "official" unofficial alphabet). One
shouldn't be expected to learn several phonetic alphabets in order to
communicate with other writers, especially with things such as the
Cyrillic vs Latin P (/r/ vs /p/). Latin is the most-used system in the
world, and so a modified version of it makes the most sense. It's as
if someone is going to be sore that their alphabet was excluded, "you
should have used one letter from each alphabet, like the gismu!". Just
like German or French weren't used in making the gismu, it wasn't
considered prudent to use many alphabets in the language.
This sort of "culture neutrality" is ridiculous. Having the language
pronounceable by the majority of people, not using certain metaphors
("I'm feeling down"), not basing the word-set on one relatively small
language - these things are important. A new alphabet takes a few
hours to learn for anyone who doesn't know it, it's trivial. Yet each
of you want to I suppose 'diversify' the language by not specifying an
official alphabet? I'm confused, and think that I may have missed
something here.
Regarding the alphabet proposal, if Lojban were to take on another
official alphabet (besides, er, ASCII), I would hope that it is the
IPA, and not something that, frankly and unfortunately, looks goofy
(which is true of any non-standard alphabet used in a constructed
language). If anyone has a complaint with how hard it is to write (I
would type it regardless, so I have none), suggest that alternate
forms be added to the IPA.
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