Second resend. Double apologies if triplicate. trying listserver

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!shoulson>]

Subject: 'th' and phonemes

Thanks, Bob, for your article on the difference between phones and phonemes
(argh, but that commercial makes me wanna strangle someone.  Not that they
call 'em "phonics," but that they claim, "one you learn them [the 44
"phonics"], you can read and spell almost everything!"  In what language?
Certainly NOT English!)

Introducing 'h' for the 'th' sound would be silly.  Lojban does not include
that sound as a phoneme in its stock (and for good reason; it's not a
common sound in the world's languages).  I'm not positive I'd accept /th/
as a phone included in 't', but that's just me.  I would more likely consider
it to be just plain outside the language, like the Arabic pharyngeal
(despite its common transliteration as 'x').  Remember our nifty new name
feature:  if all else fails, there's {la'o}.

I certainly would not support calling in the capital letters for more
phonemes; that just asks for a HUGE and totally a priori alphabet with no
memory hooks.  Not pretty.  Ask me about the extra-alphabetical symbols in
Schleyer's Volap\"uk one day.  In fact, I would actually like to see the
use of capitals for *all* required stress in lojban, thus making spaces
optional (if our word-resolving algorithm really works), if indispensible
for human sanity.  Also, since stress is considered significant in Lojban,
it would be an extension (albeit not a necessary one) to the audio-visual
correspondence.

There are a zillion sounds that we could wind up adding to the Lojban
alphabet if we wanted to include everything.  If we did, we wouldn't have
Lojban, we'd have IPA.

~mark