Re: [lojban] la .alis.

[Michael Everson <michael.everson@gmail.com>]

On 29 Mar 2010, at 01:29, Jorge Llambías wrote:

> I think the only place caps are used in the translation is in:
> 
> lu la'e di'u krinu le nu zo CILRE cmene i jdika le ka temci kei lo cacra be li ba'e CI ca ro djedi be li ba'e RE li'u
> 
> Italics is probably a much better idea than caps for that.

I'd agree there. (That's near the end of Chapter IX.)

> But I think the more interesting typographical question for Alice is not so much the use of capitals, but how to mark dialogue/quotes. I find  lu"..."li'u  quite hideous. I much prefer «lu ... li'u», which I think is what the ju'i lobypli used to use.

Well, I would certainly use guillemets and not comma-quotation marks because of the very common use of apostrophe as a letter throughout the text.

On 29 Mar 2010, at 03:57, Leo Molas wrote:

> As you said, there are many alternatives for the actual alphabet, and many discussions about orthography alternatives. However, the way we use it commonly is the way you'll read it in the IRC or in the books.

I'm aware of that.

> There might be better ways to write lojban, and you may writing it better than us, but the way we write it's the way we like to read it. (I re-wrote that sentence to not be *that* tautological).

I understand what you mean.

> Of course, the way we write it might be modified for good, but that should be done by the community, more specifically by the LLG (since it's an ex-cathedra language and all that stuff).
> 
> You can, of course, publish your book the way you want. The problem will be that that will not be written lojban. It could be another isomorphism from some writings to lojban, but not what's known as written lojban.

As John has pointed out, Tengwar and Cyrillic orthographies differ from standard Lojban orthography, so this variation is just another.

> For example, I could write a book in English, but I change all characters 'a' with 'u', and all 'u' with '#' (saying it's because it's more beautiful or readable).

This is not analogous to what I am interested in doing. 

> It would be a pain in the ass for all the English speakers, and, assuming it's actually better, is not going to
> really help anyone, since new speakers will be confused.

The analogue would be to publish a book in English with all its punctuation removed and with all capital letters converted to small letters.

> And about this last point, if anyone get who doesn't speak lojban, and is interested, he or she will be confused when he start learning lojban. I think this would be the worst part.

Actually I personally have never made any headway in understanding how Lojban worked before I tried to parse it with punctuation. 

> You claim that "centuries of Latin typographic practice have evolved because those practices are *useful* to readers", well, that's assuming that they actually evolved.

Of course they did. See

Parkes, M. B. 1992. Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07941-8

> It's not true until it's proved.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation#History

> Take the natural languages, for example. They evolved for centuries, as well as their written versions, but they have so many problems, that led us to develop a language trying to prevent all this faults.

Punctuation and capitalization is mark-up. It *adds* information. So long as it is used judiciously, I cannot see how it might be related to the kind of "fault" to which you refer.


On 29 Mar 2010, at 05:44, John Cowan wrote:

> Robin Lee Powell scripsit:
> 
>> "capitalize proper names because that's how English does it" most *certainly* does not.
> 
> Not just English, but essentially *every* language written in Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic, which amounts to a huge fraction of all the written languages on the planet.  Also, FWIW, Loglan., which originally used
> upper/lower case as Lojban does.

I found this, which is pretty cool: http://www.loglan.org/Texts/la-mioskun.html

Michael

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