[lojban] Re: "la" rule

["Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org>]

Bob LeChevalier wrote:

> John E Clifford wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that no trick so far discussed will work in practice: 
> > we will not remember to
> > exempt certain syllables from names, we will forget pauses (though 
> > making {la} and the like to be
> > learned as {la.} where the period is a genuine glottal stop might 
> > improve things).
>
> That is the essence of the problem.
>
> Without a solution that unquestionably will work and be used in 
> practice, the justification for changing the baselined status quo 
> isn't there.
Well, that's the question to be asked, isn't it.  We have a solution 
already, which unquestionably does NOT work.  Do we jettison it in favor 
of one that might?  We have to pick our catastrophe.
> Those who like the pause-all-the-time solution can implement the 
> practice of pausing all the time to show that in fact people can and 
> will learn to do so, which could at least partially negate this 
> argument; that is a legal dialect.  I suspect such a dialect would be 
> aesthetically displeasing, but we'd be able to judge by example.
I don't deny the potential aesthetic problems, though aesthetics is in 
the ear of the beholder.  A lot of Lojban's sound-system is already 
considered "aesthetically displeasing" by many listeners (usually 
outside of the Lojban camp).  But audio-visual isomorphism is a more 
important consideration for Lojban (to me) than aesthetics.
> > Again, using
> > something that occurs nowhere else (the glottal stop is a 
> > difficult-to-use-or-remember-or-hear
> > example) seems the safest route (and can be used, as was pointed out 
> > some time ago, to deal with
> > borrowings as well).
>
> We tried the "something that occurs nowhere else" trick for fu'ivla 
> compounding, using ",iy," as the hyphen.  I think someone eventually 
> came up with a "somewhere else" and it was aesthetically displeasing 
> to people as well.
Look, we already ARE using something that occurs nowhere else in the 
word: the pause!  Plans to use something even more obtrusive in that 
role aren't going to help. 

~mark


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