RE: sts- [was: RE: [lojban] Brochure updates

[And Rosta <arosta@uclan.ac.uk>]

Nick:
#And buffer vowel or no buffer vowel, the fact that we can have clusters
#as crunchy as ml- and mr- and -rnl- in the first place means Lojban is
#hardly well-equipped for a urination competition with Esperanto. 

As Lojbab once pointed out, those clusters are at least intervocalic
in most environments. And anyway, if you can buy the idea that there
can be such a thing as a phoneme with no defined realization, then
the buffer vowel is real and there are no true clusters at a phonological
level.

#After all, who on earth would be primarily attracted to Lojban because of
#*euphony* --- and then not run screaming the first time they see a {ce'u}?

Anecdote: I first heard of (or became interested in) Lojban (as opposed to Loglan) is a message posted to Conlang by John in which he translated 
something or other (some kind of Prolog program, I seem to recall) into 
Lojban. And incredible as it may seem (& it certainly does to me), I was 
entranced by its rhythmic and segmental euphony. All I can remember now 
is that the rhythm was dactyllic/anapestic and that it contained the word 
"jonja'e".

Nowadays I find Lojban so excruciatingly ugly that it genuinely causes me
palpable pain to read or write it.

--And.