Re: phonetic irregularity

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

la .iVAN. cusku di'e

> But Japanese?  By no means.  No counterpart of Lojban {u} exists in
> Japanese, neither does a precise counterpart of Lojban {o}; the vowel
> "o" in Japanese is rather high, and the vowel "u" is not rounded.

Well, actually, the Lojban vowel description is based on high-mid-low
and front-central-back positions only, and says nothing about roundedness.
(That's why it's "la tirki,ieC" for some C.)  In particular, I tend to
pronounce Lojban "y" with some roundedness, rather close to [U].

> Italian and Portuguese have
> two varieties of "e" and "o" each,

So they do, but either will match Lojban "e" and "o".  Anglophones are told
to pronounce Lojban "e" as [E], not [e], in fact, so as to avoid the
[ei] or [Ei] that is normal in English.

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.