Re: [lojban] Re: Initial impression

[Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Seth <thirderivative@aol.com> wrote:
>
> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the
> development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field
> of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial
> judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image. Punctuation
> ought to be reserved for marking various degrees of breaks and pauses in the
> flux of speech or thought - between words, not within. It adds structure to
> written text to make it easier on the eye - remember how it came about, most
> ancient and early medieval scripts did not use punctuation at all. Even if
> this language uses marker words in its stead, if you want it to be read by
> humans and not only by machines, you have to accomodate human perception to
> a degree. And the apostrophe represents an omission, either to indicate
> sloppy speech, to facilitate rhythm keeping in poetry, or the like. All
> these identifications are preoccupied and not easily unlearned.

There are three; I'll address them individually below. But personally
I think once you get used to it (which only took me about two weeks)
they're really not so bad.

> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound,
> what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is
> otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater
> simplicity of the apostrophe is quite subjective and I can't find myself
> subscribing to it. In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over
> any other? Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper
> graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier
> recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are examples of
> such an endeavour.

The difference between that sound and others is that, for purposes of
morphology, it is neither a consonant nor a vowel, and in fact
morphologically acts like it's not there. Far from greater visibility
than an h, the apostrophe as one of the smallest marks it is possible
to make manages to make itself scarce in a way that IMO fits its role
quite nicely.

Also, I don't really think of it as punctuation; lots of languages
have apostrophes in the middle of words, and in many of them it is a
consonant sound.

> 3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark
> the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't
> write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it
> which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it
> uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise
> disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.

Many people treat periods as an optional formality, in part because
they look unpleasant to many of us. But we've found that the one in
the word ".i" in particular greatly improves readability - and, to be
frank, ".i" is basically a punctuation mark anyway.

My own opinion is that the most legible lojban uses periods, while the
most beautiful lojban does not; I've done a little lojban calligraphy
(...and I've been meaning to post about this on the wiki and haven't
done so) and normally eschew periods there because they are
unattractive - except that sometimes I include the one in ".i"

Also, a letter would be inappropriate for . because it isn't a
phoneme, but rather an allophonic rule about what vowels do at the
start of words. One of the key principles of Lojban orthography is a
single phoneme per letter.

> 4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals that
> do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its place. This
> would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q' depending on its
> position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.

The comma is very ugly, and really ought to be avoided. It's only
found in names, and only those names that are sufficiently
un-lojbanified to need it; there seems to be an unstated sense that
"properly" lojbanizing your name includes making it work without
commas, probably because you and I are far from alone in disliking
them.

To me the comma is an un-lobykai equivalent of including foreign
diacritics in English names or w's in Spanish, both of which are
slightly jarring to come across. Sufficiently assimilated foreigners
in English-speaking lands nearly always drop their diacritics, and
when Spanish absorbs a word completely enough the spelling shifts
(hence "el váter" as the modern spelling of the word borrowed and
clipped from English "water closet"). Its inclusion in a word
instantly marks the word as being outside of the Lojban language, and
has little bearing on the aesthetics of proper Lojban.

> 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand
> correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to me
> almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it disturbing
> at best. Yet again the 'q' seems the ideal fit for the purpose of fulfilling
> the rule that it must end on a consonant. It would not alter the sound of
> the spoken name, since it would remain silent as the glottal stop at the end
> of a word is not pronounced (hardly doable at all). (Could this possibly
> create ambiguity in spoken language?)

All names have to fit Lojbanic phonotactics already, so they cannot be
used as is (short of saying "la'o .zoi. This is a name that you can't
say in Lojban .zoi."). As for whether allowing names to end in vowels
could create ambiguity, the answer is yes. This ambiguity could be
prevented by putting constraints on names like those on type-4 fu'ivla
(heck, we could have our names *be* type-4 fu'ivla, so that
"kreigdane" means "x1 is Craig Daniel" or something), but this would
be worse - it would require all names to end in a vowel, so it
wouldn't really solve the problem, and it would put even greater
constraints on their shapes. Also, the slinku'i test (the test to make
sure putting a cmavo in front of a type-4 fu'ivla won't cause
ambiguity) is a little tricky, and since the first thing most people
do is Lojbanize their names, it's a good thing we don't insist on this
from every novice.

As for a silent consonant or a glottal stop, Lojban's goals as a
language would be betrayed by the breakdown of audiovisual isomorphism
required for the former, and the latter would require a different
phonology, one in which the glottal stop was a phoneme like any other
- which it isn't precisely because, as you note, there are many times
when it's difficult to pronounce.

> But these issues are honestly just pristine feedback aimed at only serving
> the course. I am not aware of others having expressed similar or contrary
> thoughts. All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing
> you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.

Welcome!

In time I'm sure you'll find that the language has its quirks, and
everyone's got one or two that bug them, but it's great fun anyhow.

mi'e .kreig.daniyl.