From phma@oltronics.net Sun Mar 25 06:07:42 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 25 Mar 2001 14:07:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 39395 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2001 14:07:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 25 Mar 2001 14:07:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO neofelis.ixazon.lan) (207.15.133.26) by mta2 with SMTP; 25 Mar 2001 14:07:18 -0000 Received: by neofelis.ixazon.lan (Postfix, from userid 500) id DB73F3C574; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 09:07:01 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: phma@oltronics.net To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Uses of 'y' Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 08:48:12 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.29.2] Content-Type: text/plain References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0103250907010S.00922@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com From: Pierre Abbat On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Avital Oliver wrote: >As I understood, 'y' is used only between rafsi in a lujvo, where without >using 'y', there would be an illegal consonant cluster. Also, as I >understand, any consonant cluster which is not 'easy' to pronounce may >have a 'short un-Lojbanic' vowel in between. If this is true, why is there >a real need for 'y'? Why can't people just implicitly add 'y', without >there being a formal letter for 'y'? There are consonant clusters that are hard for a monolingual jbojbe (of which there aren't any in reality, I'm talking about the inhabitants of la lojbangug noi xanri) to pronounce, such as "bk", and there are clusters that occur in Lojban that are hard for foreigners to pronounce, such as "jb". Jbojbe don't use buffer vowels. It is foreigners who use them. Sometimes a lujvo has 'y' where the cluster is legal. For instance, "ricypudyxrula" (orchard flower) has one; without it, it could be misunderstood as "ri cpudyxrula", which is meaningless, but since the language is designed to be lexed unambiguously we put it in anyway. 'y' also occurs in names, and may be put in because there is a sound in a foreign language that a jbojbe finds hard to pronounce. For instance, Abkhaz and other Caucasian languages have huge inventories of consonants and clusters, but Lojban doesn't, so we say "abyxaz". phma