Subject: Re: [lojban] mi prami la lojban .iku'i...

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 20:56:18 -0400

At 07:52 PM 06/21/2001 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>>There is exactly one aspect of the language that irredemably annoys me,
>>no matter what anyone says (and I've seen the explanation).
>>
>>The fact that the words for the numbers are not in alphabetical order.
>
>Or any other (vowels aside except occasionally). Has anyone come up with a
>decent mnemonic?

The vowels ARE in an order, and indeed alphabetical for the digits 1-9 (I 
should have made 0 consistent, but I was still trying to keep some words 
the same as in TLI Loglan where I could argue that my choice had some 
international non-Loglan basis - remember that Lojban was started primarily 
as an effort to change JCB's attitude, and not with the expectation that we 
would actually need to finish it uniquely.)

The rules were no two numbers with the same first consonant and no two with 
the same vowel and only a voiced/unvoiced distinction. Relearning and 
systemization of other sets was the other key design factor. "le" and its 
relatives were unchangeable, as were ti/ta/tu, vi/va/vu, zi/za/zu, and 
se/te/ve/xe (which I SHOULD have made differently-vowelled, but oh well), 
mi, and ca/pu/ba and nu/ka/ni and du (the latter two sets and singleton 
derived from the related gismu). We needed two triplets like da/de/di, and 
ri/ra/ru, a fivesome like fa/fe/fi/fo/fu, and two logical connective 
fivesomes like ga/ge/gi/go/gu and ja/je/ji/jo/ju (all of which had 
preferences based on changing minimally from TLI Loglan values). There 
were a few others that could have been changed but I was motivated to 
restrict their values, like me, and ma/mo, and ku to replace gu, ke to 
replace ge.

Given even these constraints though (especially the triplets and fivesomes) 
and numbers were not that easy to make maximally separable.

>pc, who cannot reliably count to 5 in Lojban -- and certainly not to 6 (which
>I can do in Hindi, for God sake!)

Really! I knew parecivomu before I knew 50 gismu. xazebisono took me only 
a little longer.

>OK, so other series were more imporant than numbers (what series? why?)

Addressed above.

> but
>even given that, why couldn't the nine consonants used have been used in
>order?

We couldn't have met the noisy environment constraint that led to 
differentiating the vowels systematically, the consonants as different as 
possible.

Think about bacedifogujakelimonu, for example, collides with 8 of those 
that I had reserved. Maybe there was another solution, but there weren't 
that many.

> Ah, well, if this is the worst problem we have with Lojban (it is,
>isn't it?),

Of course %^)

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org