Re: loglan rapprochement orthography

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>Anyway, I have one serious question.  It is not clear from the sources I have
>read (maybe because I missed the vital para) whether V'V counts as one
>syllable or two.  Is it {fi'ORtu'a} or {fi'orTU'a} -- or even {FI'ortu'a}?

One of the reasons we put apostrophe in the language was to resolve this
question, which JCB left ambiguous and speaker dependent.  All marked
dissyllable are of course, 2 syllables, and it is incorrect to try to
pronounce them as one.  Thus {fi'orTU'a} is correct.

"Normal" capitalization and punctuation is not a viable alternative because
we do need markable stress (which using apostrophe for glottal stop among
all possibioities along with "normal capitalization" eliminates both
standard ways of showing syllable stress in orthography).  We also need
internal syllabification marking to show intended pronunciation of names
"r,l" vs "rl", so you need a syllable mark that pretty much has to be
some kind of punctuation mark.  This dooms the software programs to be
messed up no matter what we do.  And of course cpaitalization and final
period are a convention that has no significance in Lojban since the
sentence boundary is always marked by a cmavo (verbal punctuation).  So
you end up wasting two features of orthography on merely aesthetic
considerations.

lojbab