No Subject

["STEVE L RICE" <cbmvax!uunet!ALASKA.BITNET!CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu!FTSLR>]

Yes, this is another inquiry into the differences between Loglan and Lojban.
This time the topic is phonemics and the process of borrowing/deriving new
words.

In borrowing and deriving new words, Lojban doesn't seem to differentiate
between the sounds of "a" in sAd, sAcred, and bAr, even though these represent
quite distinct phonemes in English and (I think) Lojban.  Thus, the "a" in
"badri" is equated with that of "sad"--or else the words have only one phoneme
in common, which seems too tenuous for a mnemonic, let alone a derivation.
this also occurs in "banli" (mnemonic "grand").  The sound in bAr appears to be
the norm, so I won't give any examples for it.  "Censa" has the mnemonic
"sacred"; again, unless the "a's" are the same, there is only one phoneme in
common (unless the order of phonemes is considered unimportant).

Another case is the Lojban version of "Sally" ("salis").  The Loglan version is
"selis", because /e/ is closer to the digraph [ae] than /a/ is.  Why does
Lojban use /a/?

Likewise, I don't see more than one shared phoneme between "balvi" and
"later"--unless "later" is transcribed /leitr/, for example, which is false to
the English phonemic system.  While the glide is definitely there, it is
generally unnoticed by the average English-speaker, so it wouldn't help one
recognize or remember the word.  This leaves "balvi" with a single-phoneme
match for mnemonic or derivational purposes, which would be unacceptable in
Loglan.  I can only conclude that Lojban's system for deriving words is far
more lenient than Loglan's, for about a fourth of the vocabulary (I've been too
busy with Loglan to perform an exact count) seems to have the same
peculiarity..

On a related subject, I noticed in a recent posting on sci.lang that (according
to lojbab) Lojban has a phonetic writing system.  As a linguist, I've used
phonetic orthographies, and they're extremely awkward for everyday pruposes.  I
would suggest that you switch to a phonemic alphabet, such as Loglan has.

Another distinction is the method of borrowing national names and terms.
Loglan uses the local word with as little change as possible. This is
considered a courteous way to borrow.  Lojban seems to rely on international
forms and particularly on the written form of words.  If I had to come up with
a primitive predicate for "Argentinian culture", I would try ?hento rather than
?gento, because the word in the prevalent Argentinian language (Spanish) is
pronounced "arxentino" (the "x" may be softened to an "h").  In fact, I would
use a direct borrowing:  ?arhento (the "-in-" is an adjective suffix and would
be dropped).  A similar case is "xebro" for "Hebrew"; the Hebrew equivalent is
"`ivri".  Dropping the initial gutteral (which exists in neither Loglan nor
Lojban, I think) would give the Loglan form ?ivrio. Does Lojban use
international forms for such words?  [I've just seen a posting by Mark
Shoulson, who evidently has noticed some of these points too.]

Again, "jegvo" refers to "Jehovah".  The Name is now thought to have been
pronounced either "iaue" or "iave".  I can see the problem in creating a
primitive predicate for this word, because 1. "i" is not an actual consonant
and 2. there is no consonant pair.  But if I for some reason wanted to produce
such a form for this name, I would use the original vowels.  [For the curious:
the Name was written with the vowels from another word ('adonai "Lord") as a
sign of respect; when reading aloud, one would say 'adonai rather than Yahweh.
When the Name was transliterated into Latin characters, it brought with it the
vowels from 'adonai.  (The "a" changed to "e" because it was really a schwa,
that is, an "y" sound, but was pronounced "a" following the gutteral aleph
(').)]

What does Lojban do in these cases, and why?

Also, I've been puzzled about the derivation of the word "baxso"
("Malay-Indonesian...").  Could someone enlighten me?  (For that matter, why
don't you just create a complex from "bindo" and "meljo"?)

--Steve Rice