Re: [lojban] la .alis.

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

On 29 Mar 2010, at 21:08, Michael Turniansky wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Michael Everson
> 
>> Now, now. Conventions are devised by people. In the Latin script, certain conventions are used for most languages. Capitals at the beginning of sentences, full stops at the end, capitals for personal names. Sure, when Lojban was devised, other conventions were used. That does not mean that text in Lojban ceases to be Lojban if traditional Latin casing and punctuation conventions are used. After all, if Tengwar can be used, or Cyrillic, then why should there be some sort of "ban" on using "Victorian typographic conventions" for a book written in the nineteenth century? It's just a convention. You might not prefer it. You've stated that you've got preferences.
> 
> But as the Latin alphabet was adopted by each culture, they did make modifications to it, to suit their individual needs.

None of them ditched casing and punctuation.

> Or would you insist that a French word that is supposed to have an accent grave use an accent ague or circumflex, simply becuase it wasn't isomorphic with a different language?

Orthographic question, not typographic.

> Would you remove the upside-down question marks and exclamations in Spanish?

No. ¡In fact they're rather helpful! ¿Don't you agree? :-)

> Would you change spellings because a j in Spanish isn't the same sound as a j in French?

Orthographic question.

> Insist French drop « » in favor of “” ?

No. But I wouldn't favour ditching quotation marks entirely either.

> Insiit German use only capitals for proper nouns, not all nouns, as they currently do?

A good many publishers in the early twentieth century, and in the DDR later on, did print German thus.

> When used in lojban, Latin alphabet has certain conventions.  There is some flexibility, but the
> limits of flexibility are strictly defined.

Defined by whom? For what purpose? What actual *utility* is there is not being able to identify structures at a glance? What *benefit* is there to "la alis" over "la Alis"? Since the spec outlines the potential use of quotation marks and exclamation and question marks (which it DOES) why does an exploration of the application of traditional Latin typography attract so much grumbling? Did you know that Loglan cases, by the way?

Michael

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