Subject: Some questions

From: Avital Oliver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:28:07 -0600 (CST)

a) Regarding be/bei/be'o. I don't quite understand why bei is needed. Why
can't it be defined that <le SELBRI be TEXT be'o> be understood as "what
fills the place for '_______ cu SELBRI TEXT'", and sumti are separated the
'standard' way in a normal bridi

b) After starting to teach Lojban to some friends, they all shouted out
that "This goddamn 'y' letter is all fucked-up. It sounds too close to
either a or e". I live in Israel, and Israeli speak in a european accent
(which I understood is the 'best' way to pronounce Lojban). 'a' is NOT
pronounced as in 'ball', but in a 'higher' way. It makes 'a' sound very
close to 'y'. 'y' is also a non-standard sound in modern Hebrew. From my
small experience in language construction, I always got stuck in the
5-vowel barrier. It's very tempting to get to more, but you always end up
with some people not being able to diffrentiate. Anyone have any
explanations?

c) The use of pe with tense modifiers. I do not understand the grammer
behind <le prenu pe pu>. This seems idiotic, or at least 'forcing the
meaning' into the phrase. Isn't a sumti supposed to some after pe? And if
not, what is the exact way of understanding the meaning?

d) LOJBAN, what's with the books? =)

I probably have more, but this is for starters.

Bye,
Avital Oliver.