Re: loglan rapprochement orthography

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

John:
> la .iVAN. cusku di'e
> > Whatever it is phonetically, it is structurally not
> > a consonant (it can't be one of the {C}s in {CVCCV}, {CCV} and all the
> > other formulae), so I'd rather keep it graphically distinct from them
> > as well.  (This is also an argument against {h} in Roman.)
> doi .and., please take note.  This is the point we've been trying to
> make and (apparently) failing to.

No, I am aware of this. I recognize it as a genuine, albeit (as with
most arguments pertain to the orthography) extremely puny, argument
against <h>. I'm not sure what the criteria for graphical distinctness
are, so I won't address that point. As for the idea that using <h>
implies that there is a C at that position: it doesn't when the lojban
orthography is looked at in isolation, and while admittedly H functions
as a rather defective consonant in the phonologies of latin and some
other major languages that use the roman alph, equally it also functions
as a diacritic of sorts in pretty well every major roman alph language.

Then there's the matter, raised by Ivan & JulianP, of omission of <'>
obscuring certain within-selmao patternings. The same criticism can
be levelled at the loglany alternative standard, of course. My initial
response to this is: (i) how widespread are these patternings? (ii)
how many are lost through nonuse of the std std? (iii) are any useful
new patternings in fact brought into being by nonuse of the std std?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the upshot of (i-iii) is that
the std std is significantly better. Well in that case we could equally
well seek a way of marking <ei> <ai> <oi> <au>, e.g. by some diacritical
mark, or by using a different character for the glide - e.g. <ey> <ay>
<oy> <aw> (also <wa we wi wo wu ya ye yi yo yu>) tho this particular
suggestion has the disadvantage of making <y> correspond (unambiguously)
to two phonemes.

Note that I think the arguments pro my orthog (or a loglany one) and
con the standard standard are sufficient to conclude only that each
should be acceptable, and not that everyone should emulate my example.

coo, mie and