From BestATN@aol.com Sun Oct 31 16:11:01 1999
X-Digest-Num: 272
Message-ID: <44114.272.1515.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:11:01 EST
From: BestATN@aol.com
Subject: Re: x pronunciation from a french guy

In a message dated 10/31/1999 10:57:23 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
lojbab@lojban.org writes:

> I believe the Arabic sound Romanized as q is a Lojban x. The 
> voiced equivalent of x in Arabic is often Romanized as "gh", hence the 
> spelling of the name of the leader of Libya is sometimes Romanized as 
> Qadaffi or Ghadaffi.

The Arabic letter qaaf , the 21st letter of the Arabic alphabet, has a 
variable pronunciation depending on dialect, but it is usually transliterated 
as 'q'. Most good English dictionaries have a table of alphabets under 
'alphabet' that shows Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Greek, and sometimes 
Sanskrit/Devanagari. Anyway, the Arabic letter to use as a model for Lojban 
'x' would be khaa, the 7th letter, and it's transliteration is 'kh', distinct 
from 'q', 'k', 'h', '(dotted) h', "`", and 'gh'. 
It's nice, and I'm sure no coincidence, that Lojban 'x' has the sound of the 
IPA /x/.

Steven Lytle