Re: [lojban] Re: A new guide that needs guidance

[Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com>]

I disagree on both counts.

The roman characters are used by a lot of different languages/cultures, for one, and for two, not all writing systems are equally suitable for writing Lojban. I did an orthography for Japanese, and it required a lot of custom rules, as Japanese has no way of writing any ending consonant other than "n", and no way of writing consonant clusters other than doubles, or nC. Chinese is probablly even less suitable. Some are possibly equally suitable- I believe Russian and Arabic scripts work without too much fuss, but not all systems are equally Lojbanic. It's quite possible I'm wrong, but as far as I am aware, Roman script is the only writing system that is multi-linguistic- that is, used by more than one language.

On the second point, Tengwar is not the most culturally neutral. It was invented by an English-speaking writer as the script of a fictional race, used to write said race's fictional language. While I'm sure any LoTR fans would love to write Lojban using it, and I know that some people actually have, it is by no means neutral.

Just as with the "cultural gismu" this can really only be settled by an all or nothing approach. Either we use a system that is used by "all"- or at least the closest thing to "all"- the script which is the most widely used on this planet, or we use a system that is used by "none"- or at least used by no-one outside of Lojban, such larlermorna (and I'm pretty sure I got the name wrong).

Finally, I'm going to quote a wonderfully appropriate cliche- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Lojban's default- or maybe I should say official- orthography has been Latin script literally since it's birth. And if we count Loglan, since /before/ it's birth, as Loglan's official script - and probably only allowed one- is also Latin. From a purely functional standpoint, it has absolutely no problems. All Lojbanists are perfectly capable of writing and reading Lojban using it. And for those of us who's first language uses a different writing system, yes, it does mean learning another one- but for many foreign languages, this would be the case /anyway/. I'm learning Japanese right now- I have to learn a whole slew of new characters. If I decided to learn Jewish (Yiddish?), Arabic, Russian, etc., those require me to learn a new system as well. It kind of comes with the territory.

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 2:00 AM, Sebastian Fröjd <so.cool.ogi@gmail.com> wrote:

I understand that most jbopli today are using the Roman alphabet, and that's fine, but not really cultural neutral. So I don't understand why {lo'a} is defined as "shift letterals to Lojban (Roman) alphabet." I think every alphabet should be equally lojbanic, or? If lojban would have a default alphabet I think it should be Tengwar, since that's the most cultural neutral (and also phonetical) alphabet. Anyway, I'm already using tengwar sometimes, so I really think it would be nice to have a BY1 for tengwar also. Maybe {te'i}?
mu'o mi'e jongausib

2011/11/8 Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>

No, they ALL are....the je'o, ga'e, jo'o, etc. simply specify the context of what follows.  The fact that we normally default to a lo'a context is simply convention. I could have had any number of other lerfu, PA, heck, even whole paragraphs after using "je'o" before using the "kybu" and it would meant "ק", and not "q"

                           --gejyspa

 

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 5:55 AM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:

2011/11/3 Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com>

2011/11/3 M. Nael <muhammad.nael@gmail.com>

We do. The name of Q is "kybu".

I meant more distinctive names, as per the example I mentioned for Arabic ج

I don't know what you mean by distinctive. Each name is associated with exactly one thing. .uibu, for example, is the name of ":)". You can't use .uibu to refer to anything else.

 

  Well, that's not exactly true.  Depends on context.  For example ky bu is q, ga'e ky bu is Q, je'o ky bu is  ק and presumably jo'o ky bu is ق (forgive me if I have that wrong, Muhammad)

 

      --gejyspa

Every one of those examples is different, gejyspa, and illustrates what I said perfectly. {je'o ky. bu} is not {ky bu}.

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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