WikiDiscuss

Jorge Llamb��)B�as scripsit:

> CLL says:
>
> (1) "It is always legal to use the apostrophe (IPA h) sound in
> pronouncing a comma."

The rationale for this is that "ae"/"a,e" (for example) is a sequence
that occurs only in "foreign words", and that a "native-speaker" Lojbanist
should be able to pronounce it with the nearest "native" analogue,
namely "a'e". This is not a Loglan hangover as others have speculated,
since Loglan does not have "'"; you simply have to know which Loglan
vowel-pairs are diphthongs and which are vowel sequences.

I personally would be quite content if all such "foreign" sequences
were forbidden altogether. Can someone easily check to see whether we
have used them in fu'ivla?

> (2) "Commas are never required: no two Lojban words differ solely
> because of the presence or placement of a comma."

This was done because the contrary rule (as in Loglan) led to
absurdities like ai,ai,aiaglu being different from a,ia,ia,iaglu
(in pre-Lojban Loglan, "aiaiaiaglu" was read as the former, but
in current Loglan it's the latter). This difference
seemed to us to be too subtle, and to threaten audio-visual isomorphism.

> This seems to lead to contradiction. If {kanku,a} can be
> pronounced like {kanku'a} by (1) and the comma is not required
> by (2) so it is equivalent to {kankua}. How many different
> words are among {kanku'a}, {kanku,a} and {kankua}, and which
> are they?

I take the current position to be that "kanku'a" is a lujvo, and
"kankua" and "kanku,a" are different spellings of the same fu'ivla;
I would be in favor of forbidding "kanku,a" altogether. Note that
its stress accent is very different, KANkua vs. kanKU,a, so this
is not just a matter of a glide vs. a full vowel.

--
John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com
Monday we watch-a Firefly's house, but he no come out. He wasn't home.
Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us. He no show up. Wednesday he
go to the ball game, and we fool him. We no show up. Thursday was a
double-header. Nobody show up. Friday it rained all day. There was no ball
game, so we stayed home and we listened to it on-a the radio. --Chicolini