On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:14 AM, And Rosta
<and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael Turniansky, On 10/08/2012 14:43:
(and personally, I've always wondered why the CLL makes such a big
deal about the digits being easily told apart in noisy environments
(18.2) when as clearly demonstrated here and in so many other places
(ko'V series, fV series, etc.), it's not the case. Better for the CLL
to not make the claim at all, since it just sets up its own
counterarguments in other area of the language (my personal opinion
when I first read that passage 8 years ago? It was simply a dig at
JCB and Loglan, which uses a different system which is much easier to
memorize for the beginner (cf. tiljan and gleki's arguments about the
matter at hand) )
I don't understand your point. With the exception of re/rei, the digits *are* maximally distinct, and that is a virtue, especially in lexical domains where context is unlikely to be able to disambiguate, such digits and letters. We see in English that _x-ty_ and _x-teen_ words are frequently replaced by _x-zero_ and _one-x_, and that on the telephone the alpha-bravo-charlie-delta system is used for letter names. It's true that other series aren't internally maximally distinct, but partial internal sameness enhances learnability, and the ko'V and fV series at least make use of vocalic contrasts, which are acoustically more salient than consonantal ones (tho for reasons of acoustic distinctness, ko'V would better have been kV'o).
I am sorry you don't see my point. I will try to clarify. I never said that the digits aren't maximally distinct (although in addition to rei/re confusion, "pi" can easily be confused with bi (and to a lesser extent, pa) in a noisy environment.) But you make two claims above -- A) "[maximal distinctiveness] is a virtue, especially in lexical domains where context is unlikely to be able to disambiguate, such digits and letters" and B) "partial internal sameness enhances learnability" These are contradictory claims. Which is the virtuous one? In original Loglan, the digits 0-9 were ni, ne, to, te, fo fe, so, se, vo, ve, which directly addresses point B,but in lojban we chose to chose A over B WITH REGARD TO DIGITS, and tout it in the CLL with a direct call-out. In letters (and in many other selma'o) , on the other hand, we chose option B, despite the fact that "letters" is one of the places that you say A is better suited. And in fact, cmavo space is so tight, confusion will always be a problem in noisy environments ("Did he say "lo pa jatna cu morsi" or "lo ba jatna cu morsi"?") The big answer is "So what? Nothing we can do about it to satisfy all situations. Humans have evolved to deal with ambiguity in communication, inlcuding "ki'a/ke'o. So why draw attention to it in the CLL?" was my only point here.
--gejyspa