Re: [lojban] Nasal assimilation

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 7:21 AM, cntrational <cntrational@gmail.com> wrote:
> In most languages, when nasals come before stops, they generally assimilate
> to the stop. So, we don't say "inpossble", we say "impossble" -- /np/ is a
> cluster that's rare in most languages; it's usually changed to /mp/.
> Similarly for /mt/ → /nt/ and /mk/ → /ŋk/. Which makes it really weird that
> Lojban *does* allow clusters like /np/. What's up with that? Seems like a
> pretty glaring omission in the Lojban phonotactic rules, especially
> considering how common nasal assimilation is in the world.

In English such assimilations don't really happen (cf. "input",
"gumtree", "camcorder"). "Impossible" came into English with the
assimilation already there. The designers of Lojban were English
speakers, not linguists, so Lojban has a strong bias towards English
phonotactics, not towards what's common in the world.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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