Re: phonetic irregularity

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

The Lojban 'o' is intended to be a pure vowel, and not the diphthong of
"doe".  The better example would be a Romance 'o', for those who have been
exposed to Romance languages.  Historically, there was considered for Loglan/L
Lojban the use of the other variety of 'o', the "open o" - the two dialects
were "frogman Loglan" and "showman Loglan", and we chose with Lojban to go
woth the latter, at leats partly because half of the American populace
speaks a dialect wherein open o is indistinguishable from 'a'.  Thus I
pronounce "law" and "la" identically, though I know others do not.  The
pure vowels chosen are maximally separated, and correspond to the most
frequent 5 vowels in many languages, including Japanese, Russian, and the
Romance tongues.  The single letter Lojban vowels should NEVER be pronounced
as diphthongs, and should always be spoken tensely (I always tell people
"smile when you speak Lojban" because the tensing of your lips to smile is
often enough to get an English speaker to not slop the vowels too much.)

On the other hand, all vowel pairs in the normal orthography are diphthongs.
They happen to be the diphthong that derives from saying the pure vowels
together quickly, but they are recognized to indeed be diphthongs.  Thus
"oi" is not considered to be the same sound as "o", and the sound of "Chloe"
the way I pronounce it at least, would be in Lojban "o,i", or even "o,ui"
whereas "oi" is more like the vowel in "boy".

On the other hand, phonologically, you would have been correct if you called
us on a slightly different irregularity.  It turns out to be phonologically
very difficult to do an "ol" or an "or" without opening the "o" a little,
so in Lojban words with those letter combinations, the "o" is norammly
pronounced with the sound you suggest.  On the other hand, I only know this
because it has been explained to me - I don't hear those "o"s as the same
sound as in "law" or "awe".

lojbab