Re: more response to And

[And Rosta <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!ucleaar>]

> >but unless I am taught (by teacher or experience) to
> >pronounce /-nb-/ as /-nVb-/ it will come out as /-mb-/.  /tcVr/ and
> >/tVcr/ may well not be distinct unless buffered.
>
> I've never been to Canberra Australia, but would never pronounce it
> Camberra, nor do I feel a need to buffer it.  Now I MIGHT mishear one as
> the other, but I'm not sure.

I have [kambr@] (& have been there, found it rather dull, & can't remember
how the locals say it) & [@mpleznt] _unpleasant_.

/n/ assimilation is common in English. And we don't notice it. This is the
important point.

>
> Remembering that Lojabn words end in a vowel, as do most Lojban
> syllables, I ask you to compare "matcVri" and "matVcri" for each of the
> vowels - I don't have any problems.
I'm sorry, I was very unclear. In fact I can't understand what I meant.
Possibly I meant that unbuffered /-tc#r-/ and /-t#cr-/ are indistinct.
Or I may have been intending to say that /-tcr-/ is not distinct from
/-tr-/ without buffering.

> I suspect there is no totally universal phonology of this many sounds that
> will not confuse someone of some culture.
True, but you should either aim for the simplest phonology or do proper
experiments to see whether the interference from native phonology is
tolerable.

By using *SLAVIC* (!) phonology as a model, aiming for simplicity was the
last thing Loglan was doing.

> another factor in buffering is length.  The buffer sound will be MUCH
> shorter than any vowel, including the hyphen schwa, which itself is
> normally shorter duration than other vowels in my speech.
So Lojban phonology has a 2- or 3-way length distinction? Not a desideratum,
surely?
The description of the phonology didn't mention vowel length as significant.

> >It's not just the buffer vowel that makes the phonology wobbly: other iffy
> >elements include:
> >
> >(a) /x/ contrasting with /h/ when adjacent to /i u o/
>
> remember that Lojban "h", the apostrophe, is a devoiced vowel glide - it
> should never be velarized or even particularly fricative.

(a) /x/ should therefore be required to have lots of scrape, as in some
accents of Dutch.
(b) "h" will be velarized if adjacent to a velar vowel.

> Calling the
> thing an "h" sound is to make it easier for English speaking
> non-linguists, who hear "h" (and are never satisfied by our explanation
> of why we use apostrophe instead of "h" for the sound)

(c) Why don't you use "h"?
(d) Is the 'h' in _fi'i_ different from the /h/ in English _heed_?

> >(b) /e/ versus /ei/ and /o/ versus /ou/. I can perfectly well hear the
> >difference between _fed_ versus _fade_, and when I speak Italian, Italians
> >can tell whether I'm saying /se/ or /sei/, but when I hear Italians, I
> >can't tell whether they're saying /se/ or /sei/.
>
> The former is why we now teach Lojban 'e' as "fed".

Okay; but lax e is unstable in word-final position.

> To an Italian who
> is having trouble being understood, we might even teach as the vowel of
> "fad", since an Italian will not be making an /a/ anywhere near that
> sound.
I don't know your accent, but my /a/ in _fat_ is very close to the /a/
in Italian _gatto_. (For me, _Marry merry Mary_ does not involve homophones.

> >(d) /ii/ v. /i/; /uu/ v. /u/.
>
> The divowels are not used in Lojban except in names (normal caveat) and
> in VV attitudinals where there is usually a glottal stop preceding and
> the pair is pronounced as a semi-vowel/vowel.

You still have iffy contrasts like '.i' versus '.ii'.

> The main risk here is with people for whom an affricate like /tc/ or
> /ts/ is considered a single phoneme in the native language.  The
> solution is to syllabify between the two phonemes comprising the
> affricate in a triplet.

> >But given that Lojbanists are keener on getting the language spoken than
> >perfected, my criticisms do not of course warrant changing the system.
>
> After 36 years, isn't it about time to see if it works rather than to
> endlessly theorize how it might be better when there is so little data
> on speech problems in planned languages (or second languages in
> general).  Lojban is a scientific tool.  We will learn from those who
> speak it.
I think we'll learn more from the process of perfecting the language than
from our attempts to speak it. I agree that it should be spoken, but
only to test whether the design works. So I disapprove not of speaking
Lojban but only of baselining anything. I think the baseline should evolve
naturally, but never be sacred or inviolable. (I should point out that I
don't find J.C.Brown's reasons for inventing Loglan very interesting.)

> My complaint with conlang developers who do not intend their
> language to be spoken is that there truly is no way to evaluate the
> result aesthetically or linguistically, except to apply theories that
> aren't all that solid in the irregular NL world.
Aesthetic evaluation is a personal matter, & not a prerequisite to
appreciation. If an aprioristic artificial language both works, and
differs from natural language in fundamental ways, then we have learnt
a lot.

> The unambiguous morphology also counts for something.
I don't see why it's so prized, since the meaning of a lujvo is not
predictable from the morphology.

-------
And