Unofficial alphabet lists for Lojban/Latin/English, Greek, and Russ

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

>Date:         Wed, 12 Feb 1992 13:10:56 GMT
>From: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad%COGSCI.ED.AC.UK@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>

>>  Why not {.uybu} for "w"?

>And while we're at that, (1) why not {tsy} and {tcy} instead of {sybu}
>and {cybu}?  (2) why not {.iybu} instead of {tordubu}?

Check me on the details of lerfu, please.  A lerfu is anything in lexeme BY
(which usually has to be followed by a space, otherwise the "y" isn't
recognized as a true vowel and you get consonant clusters rather than a
cmavo stream), or any word followed by "bu".  Is {tsy} valid?  If not, can
we use {tsy.bu} instead?  I'd like one or the other for tzadi in Hebrew,
and Ivan would want one for the similar-sounding Cyrillic letter.  I fear,
though, from looking at them, that they're not.  {tsy.} isn't in BY,
neither is it really a Lojban-recognizable word:  it's neither cmene,
brivla, not cmavo by its form (ends in vowel, monosyllabic, but with a
consonant cluster).

>>  For the Hebrew Alphabet, do you want separate names for the hard and soft
>>  forms of the letters that have hard and soft forms (presence/lack of weak
>>  dagesh)?  Like bet/vet, kaf/chaf.  Not all these differences are observed
>>  by every dialect, but some are near-universal (like kaf/chaf).
>Don't forget that in Yiddish {py} and {py dagec.bu} are separate
>letters, pronounced as {f} and {p} respectively.

Hebrew distinguishes the pronunciations in just about all dialects, but
they're not considered separate letters, any more than kaf/chaf.  They
alternate.  But you're quite right, they don't alternate in Yiddish.  For
that matter, Yiddish considers two vavs as sort of a letter in its own rite
(similar to Welsh "ll" or "dd"?), as well as qametz-alef versus patach-alef
versus silent alef.  Then again, since we're just spelling out stuff using
the alphabet, I don't think all these need their own lerfu.  If I were
spelling out a Yiddish word, I'd just say when there was a qametz-alef and
when a hard peh, etc.

>>  I can swing Devanagari also, though only the Sanskrit letters, not those
>>  used only in later Hindi.
>Let me give them a go:  {kybu}, {ky'ybu}, {gybu}, {djybu}, {py'ybu},
>and - oops, what do we do with the retroflex consonants?  Is it
>{drybu} and {dry'ybu}?  I think I'll quit this activity here.

Well, lessee.  For vowels we can likely get by with {.abu}, {.a'abu},
{.ibu}, {i'ibu}, {.ubu}, {.u'ubu}, {ribu}, {ri'ibu} (Welll, almost
believable pronunciation), things like {libu} for the vocalic l in Vedic.
You looked like you had a good start on the consonants (hoping we can make
{djybu} valid somehow.  make life easier).  If we can swing those clusters,
I imagine retroflexes could work okay with {trybu}, etc.  People would know
what you meant.  How'd we swing the "h" vs. visarga?  The palatal vs.
retroflex vs. dental "s" (Lojban only has two s's.)?  Anusvara?  These
things are probably nothing serious (I have no qualms about {visargas.bu},
after all, it has a long name in Skt too.)

>>  Date:        Wed, 12 Feb 1992 22:35:03 +1100
>>  From: nsn@AU.OZ.MU.EE.MULLIAN
>>
>>  Since eta and omega represent long e and o in ancient Greek, I see less than
>>  no reasons to not say {.e'ebu, .o'obu}
>Very true.

Yeah.  It's silly to worry about the meanings of words like {.iobu}, as per
my question earlier, but the fact is we have the
{.uibu/zo'obu/joibu/denpa bu} precedents.

~mark (shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu)