Lojban In General

right on many points, my friend. welcome to Lojban, it is an amazing language. If you have good ideas for an improved orthography, design one. There have been several original orthographies produced, and more are always welcome until the community finds one they love.

seryf

---Original Message---
From: Klaus F. Abel <kfa@gmx.net>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Sent: Sun, Jan 3, 2010 3:55 am
Subject: lojban Initial impression

Dear friends,

A happy new year to everybody!

I just discovered this site and find it really exciting. As a computer programmer, the idea of a completely parseable human language sounds ingenious. I'll definitely want to learn more about Lojban.

My native language is German, I'm fluent in English and Esperanto, have basic knowledge in French, Spanish, Finnish, Russian, and got just a taste of Chinese.

From an initial impression, regarding the chapter on alternative orthographies, it appears to me that development of Lojban is still in flux. Is that correct?

If yes, I hope it's not a complete heresy to sound off a few spontaneous dislikes which might put some people off getting friendly with it.

1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image. Punctuation ought to be reserved for marking various degrees of breaks and pauses in the flux of speech or thought - between words, not within. It adds structure to written text to make it easier on the eye - remember how it came about, most ancient and early medieval scripts did not use punctuation at all. Even if this language uses marker words in its stead, if you want it to be read by humans and not only by machines, you have to accomodate human perception to a degree. And the apostrophe represents an omission, either to indicate sloppy speech, to facilitate rhythm keeping in poetry, or the like. All these identifications are preoccupied and not easily unlearned.

2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound, what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater simplicity of the apostrophe is quite subjective and I can't find myself subscribing to it. In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over any other? Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are examples of such an endeavour.

3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.

4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals that do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its place. This would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q' depending on its position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.

5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to me almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it disturbing at best. Yet again the 'q' seems the ideal fit for the purpose of fulfilling the rule that it must end on a consonant. It would not alter the sound of the spoken name, since it would remain silent as the glottal stop at the end of a word is not pronounced (hardly doable at all). (Could this possibly create ambiguity in spoken language?)

An alternative for the silent consonant could be 'w', as it occurs sometimes in German (e.g. the name Pankow, a borough of Berlin, is pronounced "paŋkoː"). From this viewpoint it would be even better suited than 'q' to replace the midword comma as well.

But these issues are honestly just pristine feedback aimed at only serving the course. I am not aware of others having expressed similar or contrary thoughts. All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.

Sincerely,

Klaus F. Abel

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Sunday 03 January 2010 05:55:39 Klaus F. Abel wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> A happy new year to everybody!
>
> I just discovered this site and find it really exciting. As a computer
> programmer, the idea of a completely parseable human language sounds
> ingenious. I'll definitely want to learn more about Lojban.
>
> My native language is German, I'm fluent in English and Esperanto, have
> basic knowledge in French, Spanish, Finnish, Russian, and got just a taste
> of Chinese.
>
> From an initial impression, regarding the chapter on alternative
> orthographies, it appears to me that development of Lojban is still in
> flux. Is that correct?
>
> If yes, I hope it's not a complete heresy to sound off a few spontaneous
> dislikes which might put some people off getting friendly with it.
>
> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the
> development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field
> of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial
> judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image.

I use question marks as punctuation, and also quotation marks (though I'm not
sure whether to put the quotation marks inside or outside the quotation
words). I use the hyphen for abbreviation and the comma for splitting a word
at the end of a line, since the comma indicates that there is no pause.

Some natlangs have idiosyncratic uses of punctuation marks. Biblical Hebrew,
as pointed by Masoretes, uses just one punctuation mark and an assortment of
cantillation marks which show the intonation of a sentence. Armenian uses ":"
for a period and "." for a colon, and instead of putting a question mark at
the end of a sentence, it puts a curlicue on top of the question word. Greek
uses ";" as a question mark.

> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound,
> what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is
> otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater

The sound /h/ behaves unlike other consonants in Lojban. It occurs only
between vowels. A short rafsi has three letters, not counting the apostrophe.

> 3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark
> the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't
> write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it
> which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it
> uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise
> disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.

Polynesian languages write the glottal stop with the okina, which looks like
an upside-down apostrophe.

> 4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals
> that do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its
> place. This would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q'
> depending on its position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.

Not unambiguous. "naqe" could be "na.e", which means "not ... but ...",
or "na'e", which means "other than".

The thing about Lojban orthography that looks strangest to me is the capital
letters for stress. I think that accented letters look better. That the
orthography was devised before Unicode is, I think, the explanation for using
caps.

Pierre

--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Seth <thirderivative@aol.com> wrote:
>
> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the
> development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field
> of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial
> judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image. Punctuation
> ought to be reserved for marking various degrees of breaks and pauses in the
> flux of speech or thought - between words, not within. It adds structure to
> written text to make it easier on the eye - remember how it came about, most
> ancient and early medieval scripts did not use punctuation at all. Even if
> this language uses marker words in its stead, if you want it to be read by
> humans and not only by machines, you have to accomodate human perception to
> a degree. And the apostrophe represents an omission, either to indicate
> sloppy speech, to facilitate rhythm keeping in poetry, or the like. All
> these identifications are preoccupied and not easily unlearned.

There are three; I'll address them individually below. But personally
I think once you get used to it (which only took me about two weeks)
they're really not so bad.

> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound,
> what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is
> otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater
> simplicity of the apostrophe is quite subjective and I can't find myself
> subscribing to it. In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over
> any other? Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper
> graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier
> recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are examples of
> such an endeavour.

The difference between that sound and others is that, for purposes of
morphology, it is neither a consonant nor a vowel, and in fact
morphologically acts like it's not there. Far from greater visibility
than an h, the apostrophe as one of the smallest marks it is possible
to make manages to make itself scarce in a way that IMO fits its role
quite nicely.

Also, I don't really think of it as punctuation; lots of languages
have apostrophes in the middle of words, and in many of them it is a
consonant sound.

> 3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark
> the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't
> write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it
> which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it
> uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise
> disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.

Many people treat periods as an optional formality, in part because
they look unpleasant to many of us. But we've found that the one in
the word ".i" in particular greatly improves readability - and, to be
frank, ".i" is basically a punctuation mark anyway.

My own opinion is that the most legible lojban uses periods, while the
most beautiful lojban does not; I've done a little lojban calligraphy
(...and I've been meaning to post about this on the wiki and haven't
done so) and normally eschew periods there because they are
unattractive - except that sometimes I include the one in ".i"

Also, a letter would be inappropriate for . because it isn't a
phoneme, but rather an allophonic rule about what vowels do at the
start of words. One of the key principles of Lojban orthography is a
single phoneme per letter.

> 4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals that
> do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its place. This
> would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q' depending on its
> position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.

The comma is very ugly, and really ought to be avoided. It's only
found in names, and only those names that are sufficiently
un-lojbanified to need it; there seems to be an unstated sense that
"properly" lojbanizing your name includes making it work without
commas, probably because you and I are far from alone in disliking
them.

To me the comma is an un-lobykai equivalent of including foreign
diacritics in English names or w's in Spanish, both of which are
slightly jarring to come across. Sufficiently assimilated foreigners
in English-speaking lands nearly always drop their diacritics, and
when Spanish absorbs a word completely enough the spelling shifts
(hence "el váter" as the modern spelling of the word borrowed and
clipped from English "water closet"). Its inclusion in a word
instantly marks the word as being outside of the Lojban language, and
has little bearing on the aesthetics of proper Lojban.

> 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand
> correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to me
> almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it disturbing
> at best. Yet again the 'q' seems the ideal fit for the purpose of fulfilling
> the rule that it must end on a consonant. It would not alter the sound of
> the spoken name, since it would remain silent as the glottal stop at the end
> of a word is not pronounced (hardly doable at all). (Could this possibly
> create ambiguity in spoken language?)

All names have to fit Lojbanic phonotactics already, so they cannot be
used as is (short of saying "la'o .zoi. This is a name that you can't
say in Lojban .zoi."). As for whether allowing names to end in vowels
could create ambiguity, the answer is yes. This ambiguity could be
prevented by putting constraints on names like those on type-4 fu'ivla
(heck, we could have our names *be* type-4 fu'ivla, so that
"kreigdane" means "x1 is Craig Daniel" or something), but this would
be worse - it would require all names to end in a vowel, so it
wouldn't really solve the problem, and it would put even greater
constraints on their shapes. Also, the slinku'i test (the test to make
sure putting a cmavo in front of a type-4 fu'ivla won't cause
ambiguity) is a little tricky, and since the first thing most people
do is Lojbanize their names, it's a good thing we don't insist on this
from every novice.

As for a silent consonant or a glottal stop, Lojban's goals as a
language would be betrayed by the breakdown of audiovisual isomorphism
required for the former, and the latter would require a different
phonology, one in which the glottal stop was a phoneme like any other
- which it isn't precisely because, as you note, there are many times
when it's difficult to pronounce.

> But these issues are honestly just pristine feedback aimed at only serving
> the course. I am not aware of others having expressed similar or contrary
> thoughts. All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing
> you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.

Welcome!

In time I'm sure you'll find that the language has its quirks, and
everyone's got one or two that bug them, but it's great fun anyhow.

mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

>
> The thing about Lojban orthography that looks strangest to me is the capital
> letters for stress. I think that accented letters look better. That the
> orthography was devised before Unicode is, I think, the explanation for using
> caps.
>

Agreed. But like commas they aren't found in anything natively
Lojbanic, and I've been handwriting them with accents (either acutes
or macrons depending on mood) for the past bunch of years.

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - and so is ugliness. Lojban wasn't designed
as yet another Euro language.  It's founders tried hard to make it cultutally neutral.

Yes, lojbanistan is currently populated mainly by Europeans and North Americans.
If we continue to make lojban sound 'nice' to the current population of, at best,
a few dozens, we may end up making it sound 'ugly' to thousands of other potential
lojbanists.  With respect, I think we should avoid subjective judgements about what
sounds nice or ugly, and focus on the many other serious issues that need to be resolved.

mu'o mi'e andrus

--- Original Message --
> From: Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>
> To: lojban-list@lojban..org
> Sent: Sun, January 3, 2010 12:21:15 PM
> Subject: lojban Re: Initial impression
>
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Seth wrote:
> >
> > 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> > confusing and looks simply ugly. Although this may sound subjective, the
> > development of our various alphabets has come a long way also in the field
> > of aesthetics. Therefore I believe that many would agree in an initial
> > judgment about a language that deliberately ruptures the image. Punctuation
> > ought to be reserved for marking various degrees of breaks and pauses in the
> > flux of speech or thought - between words, not within. It adds structure to
> > written text to make it easier on the eye - remember how it came about, most
> > ancient and early medieval scripts did not use punctuation at all. Even if
> > this language uses marker words in its stead, if you want it to be read by
> > humans and not only by machines, you have to accomodate human perception to
> > a degree. And the apostrophe represents an omission, either to indicate
> > sloppy speech, to facilitate rhythm keeping in poetry, or the like. All
> > these identifications are preoccupied and not easily unlearned.
>
> There are three; I'll address them individually below. But personally
> I think once you get used to it (which only took me about two weeks)
> they're really not so bad.
>
> > 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h' sound,
> > what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it is
> > otherwise not used at all? The argument of better visibility and greater
> > simplicity of the apostrophe is quite subjective and I can't find myself
> > subscribing to it. In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over
> > any other? Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper
> > graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier
> > recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are examples of
> > such an endeavour.
>
> The difference between that sound and others is that, for purposes of
> morphology, it is neither a consonant nor a vowel, and in fact
> morphologically acts like it's not there. Far from greater visibility
> than an h, the apostrophe as one of the smallest marks it is possible
> to make manages to make itself scarce in a way that IMO fits its role
> quite nicely.
>
> Also, I don't really think of it as punctuation; lots of languages
> have apostrophes in the middle of words, and in many of them it is a
> consonant sound.
>
> > 3. Most irritating I find the full stop at the beginning of a word to mark
> > the glottal stop where a word begins with a vocal. Most languages don't
> > write the glottal stop at all, but I assume there is a good reason for it
> > which I will discover when reading on. Maltese is an exception to this, it
> > uses the 'q' for the glottal stop. As this letter also has been otherwise
> > disused for Lojban, it seems just perfect to fill the spot.
>
> Many people treat periods as an optional formality, in part because
> they look unpleasant to many of us. But we've found that the one in
> the word ".i" in particular greatly improves readability - and, to be
> frank, ".i" is basically a punctuation mark anyway.
>
> My own opinion is that the most legible lojban uses periods, while the
> most beautiful lojban does not; I've done a little lojban calligraphy
> (...and I've been meaning to post about this on the wiki and haven't
> done so) and normally eschew periods there because they are
> unattractive - except that sometimes I include the one in ".i"
>
> Also, a letter would be inappropriate for . because it isn't a
> phoneme, but rather an allophonic rule about what vowels do at the
> start of words. One of the key principles of Lojban orthography is a
> single phoneme per letter.
>
> > 4. Same goes for the comma in the middle of the word to separate vocals that
> > do not form a diphtong. Again the 'q' would seem perfect in its place. This
> > would introduce different pronounciation rules for the 'q' depending on its
> > position, but sufficiently simple and unambiguous.
>
> The comma is very ugly, and really ought to be avoided. It's only
> found in names, and only those names that are sufficiently
> un-lojbanified to need it; there seems to be an unstated sense that
> "properly" lojbanizing your name includes making it work without
> commas, probably because you and I are far from alone in disliking
> them.
>
> To me the comma is an un-lobykai equivalent of including foreign
> diacritics in English names or w's in Spanish, both of which are
> slightly jarring to come across. Sufficiently assimilated foreigners
> in English-speaking lands nearly always drop their diacritics, and
> when Spanish absorbs a word completely enough the spelling shifts
> (hence "el váter" as the modern spelling of the word borrowed and
> clipped from English "water closet"). Its inclusion in a word
> instantly marks the word as being outside of the Lojban language, and
> has little bearing on the aesthetics of proper Lojban.
>
> > 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand
> > correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to me
> > almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it disturbing
> > at best. Yet again the 'q' seems the ideal fit for the purpose of fulfilling
> > the rule that it must end on a consonant. It would not alter the sound of
> > the spoken name, since it would remain silent as the glottal stop at the end
> > of a word is not pronounced (hardly doable at all). (Could this possibly
> > create ambiguity in spoken language?)
>
> All names have to fit Lojbanic phonotactics already, so they cannot be
> used as is (short of saying "la'o .zoi. This is a name that you can't
> say in Lojban .zoi."). As for whether allowing names to end in vowels
> could create ambiguity, the answer is yes. This ambiguity could be
> prevented by putting constraints on names like those on type-4 fu'ivla
> (heck, we could have our names *be* type-4 fu'ivla, so that
> "kreigdane" means "x1 is Craig Daniel" or something), but this would
> be worse - it would require all names to end in a vowel, so it
> wouldn't really solve the problem, and it would put even greater
> constraints on their shapes. Also, the slinku'i test (the test to make
> sure putting a cmavo in front of a type-4 fu'ivla won't cause
> ambiguity) is a little tricky, and since the first thing most people
> do is Lojbanize their names, it's a good thing we don't insist on this
> from every novice.
>
> As for a silent consonant or a glottal stop, Lojban's goals as a
> language would be betrayed by the breakdown of audiovisual isomorphism
> required for the former, and the latter would require a different
> phonology, one in which the glottal stop was a phoneme like any other
> - which it isn't precisely because, as you note, there are many times
> when it's difficult to pronounce.
>
> > But these issues are honestly just pristine feedback aimed at only serving
> > the course. I am not aware of others having expressed similar or contrary
> > thoughts. All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing
> > you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.
>
> Welcome!
>
> In time I'm sure you'll find that the language has its quirks, and
> everyone's got one or two that bug them, but it's great fun anyhow.
>
> mi'e .kreig.daniyl.
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
> with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
> you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 5:55 AM, Klaus F. Abel <kfa@gmx.net> wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> A happy new year to everybody!

.a'o do cnino nanca gleki doi pendo
(Hopefully you are new year happy, friend!)

> From an initial impression, regarding the chapter on alternative
> orthographies, it appears to me that development of Lojban is still
> in flux. Is that correct?

Yes and no. As the language has been around for a long time, there
are many long standing traditions. But we're also open to new ideas.

> If yes, I hope it's not a complete heresy to sound off a few spontaneous
> dislikes which might put some people off getting friendly with it.

It's no heresy, in fact it's somewhat of a rite of passage.

> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
> confusing and looks simply ugly.

They're not punctuation, they're letters. Letters are quite arbitrary
in general, there's nothing odd about having a couple of letters that
are small dots.

> And the apostrophe represents an omission,

If it's any consolation, many of the apostrophes in Lojban represent
omission. For instance "nanca" has the combining form "na'a" (as in
"cabna'a", this year), with an apostrophe in place of "nc".

> 2. If the apostrophe between vocals stands simply for a spoken 'h'
> sound, what's the point of not using the 'h' proper, especially since it
> is otherwise not used at all?

We do produce text like this, every once in a while. Look, I'll do it
right now:

mi ihi pilno lo drata tadji muhi lo zahi lo ninpre cu nelci
(I, in togetherness, use the other method so that the newbie will like it.)

Doesn't hurt anything, and we can all read it fine. It's just never
caught on as the main way of writing, for various reasons.

> In that case, why such a privilege for the 'h' sound over any other?

Well there are actually various ways that sound is special in Lojban.
It only comes between vowels, and it doesn't count as a letter for a
certain letter counting algorithm in making word shapes.

As far as why we keep using the apostrophe, perhaps it's because it
helps distinguish two-vowel cmavo from cmavo clusters ("tana", that is
not, vs "ta'a/taha", said when interrupting), or because it helps in
seeing the rafsi in lujvo, or of course conservative inertia.

> Then a different alphabet should be developed with overall simper
> graphics, that would facilitate faster handwriting and easier
> recognizability than the Roman letters. Shavian or Shorthand are
> examples of such an endeavour.

We've had various scripts invented in the past few years, it's been
fun. None have caught on yet in any big way, just a few posts here
and there to the Jbotcan, but it's always possible.

> 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I understand
> correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes across to
> me almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find it
> disturbing at best.

All languages do violence to each other's names, I'm afraid.

Lojban is one of the very few you'll find with an escape hatch, where
names can come through a "zoi" or "la'o" unaltered.

> All in all, I can only laud this project and its creators, wishing
> you great success in the coming year, decade, and beyond.

ki'e .i .a'o lo xamgu do ji'a funca
(Thank you. I hope that you as well have good fortune.)

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com> wrote:
>> And the apostrophe represents an omission,
>
> If it's any consolation, many of the apostrophes in Lojban represent
> omission.  For instance "nanca" has the combining form "na'a" (as in
> "cabna'a", this year), with an apostrophe in place of "nc".

Also, the possessive ending -'s in English does not represent an
omission, and in fact derives from an older genitive ending -s written
sans-apostrophe.

> We've had various scripts invented in the past few years, it's been
> fun. None have caught on yet in any big way, just a few posts here
> and there to the Jbotcan, but it's always possible.

The Cyrillic orthography is official enough for a writeup in the CLL,
if memory serves, and I borrow its L for my main Lojban calligraphic
hand so it can't be mistaken for (dotless) i.

- mihe kreig daniyl

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> > We've had various scripts invented in the past few years, it's been

> > fun. None have caught on yet in any big way, just a few posts here
> > and there to the Jbotcan, but it's always possible.

Don't forget about larlermorna!! =P

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A couple of thoughts, as a newbie (and a linguist). (Have I posted on
this list before, or just been lurking? If I haven't posted yet, hi!)

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 19:52, Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 1. First, the usage of punctuation marks for pronounciation aides is
>> confusing and looks simply ugly.
>
> They're not punctuation, they're letters.  Letters are quite arbitrary
> in general, there's nothing odd about having a couple of letters that
> are small dots.

I have to agree with the other newbie on this point, although Stela is
certainly correct that letters are arbitrary, and the "punctuation"
symbols in Lojban count as letters rather than punctuation.

Nonetheless, most of the letters in Lojban represent a sort of happy
medium between the ways different languages with a Roman alphabet use
the letters--/t/ isn't just like English /t/, but it's similar enough
for speakers to get an idea of the sound. But, with the
English-punctuation Lojban letters, this isn't true, and any effort
towards it seems to have been tossed by the wayside.

I don't have much issue with the apostrophe used for an /h/ (except,
perhaps, that in most languages that use an apostrophe, and in
linguistics, it represents a glottal stop). But, whatever, this is
fine with me. What I **hate** is the period. Try as I might, I just
can't be looking through a Lojban text and not see these as periods.
This despite the fact that languages as diverse as Arabic, English,
and Japanese/Chinese (which use a circle on the line instead of a
dot), use a period for punctuation, and not as a character. (If it
was any later, I'd probably argue that there's something psychological
happening here, with tiny little bits just not looking quite like full
letters...)

> We've had various scripts invented in the past few years, it's been
> fun.  None have caught on yet in any big way, just a few posts here
> and there to the Jbotcan, but it's always possible.

I've come up with a system I rather like, that gets rid of all of
these little punctuation marks (so annoyed was I with the period :p),
but I can't make it pretty enough to share.

> All languages do violence to each other's names, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Although it is certainly true that
languages do violence to names when they pronounce them, or when
converting them from another writing system, they do this in writing
much less frequently--English speakers don't rewrite the Spanish name
'Juan' as 'Whann', for example. Nonetheless, Lojban does at least
have built-in outs for this.

I do wonder about this as Lojban grows and expands, though. I
wouldn't be surprised if people stop doing this to names eventually,
and just use people's names when talking...

Chris

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On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:23 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I do wonder about this as Lojban grows and expands, though.  I
> wouldn't be surprised if people stop doing this to names eventually,
> and just use people's names when talking...

Well the compromise that's emerged is the experimental cmavo "la'oi",
which is like "la" but can be followed by any foreign name (or at
least any name without a pause in it). Some people have opposed
"la'oi" as breaking some of Lojban's theoretical parsing qualities,
which it surely does, but who knows if those particular qualities are
important. I try not to use "la'oi" in any formal situations, myself,
but I doubt this level of compromise can be resisted.

I don't think we're likely to compromise any further than that,
though-- you have to Lojbanize a name to use it with just "la". I
think it's fun, getting a new name; it's part of Lojbanic culture,
which is a fun culture! I especially support names that are Lojban
words, I think it's a good teaching technique, you learn a lot of
words that you wouldn't otherwise just because they're the names of
people you meet.

mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o

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On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Seth <thirderivative@aol.com> wrote:

> right on many points, my friend. welcome to Lojban, it is an amazing
> language. If you have good ideas for an improved orthography, design one.
> There have been several original orthographies produced, and more are always
> welcome until the community finds one they love.
>
> seryf
>
>
> ---Original Message---
> From: Klaus F. Abel <kfa@gmx.net>
> To: lojban-list@lojban.org
> Sent: Sun, Jan 3, 2010 3:55 am
> Subject: lojban Initial impression
>
> Dear friends,
>
> much snipped
>

> 5. The forced adding of an 's' (or at least any consonant, if I
> understand correctly) to transliterated names that end on a vocal comes
> across to me almost as an act of violence against a sacrosanct name, I find
> it disturbing at best. Yet again the 'q' seems the ideal fit for the purpose
> of fulfilling the rule that it must end on a consonant. It would not alter
> the sound of the spoken name, since it would remain silent as the glottal
> stop at the end of a word is not pronounced (hardly doable at all). (Could
> this possibly create ambiguity in spoken language?)
>
> more snipped
>

> Sincerely,
>
> Klaus F. Abel
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
>
> with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
> you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
>

Klingon has lots of glottal stops, written as an apostrophe, in initial,
medial, and final positions. I have never heard of anyone complaining that
the glottal stop is hard to produce at the end of a word, and in fact, it
distinguishes several minimal pairs of words.

stevo

> I do wonder about this as Lojban grows and expands, though. I

> wouldn't be surprised if people stop doing this to names eventually,
> and just use people's names when talking...
>
> Chris

When writing, I'll tend to either arbitrarily lojbanise a name, but if a name is sufficiently unusual to the Lojbanic-ear, I'll usually use (WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL CMAVO FOLLOWS. USE WITH CAUTION AS CMAVO MAY VIOLENTLY COMBUST UPON CONTACT WITH PARSERS, TEXT BOOKS, AND SLABU PRENU.) la'oi *name* as it makes life easier.

We butcher names because only 'real words' can end in vowels, so to make it absolutely clear, names have to end in consonants. Honestly, any Asian country will make you do the same thing upon registering as a visitor or resident. The general policy in jbogugde is to either grin and bear lojbanising your name, or pick a new name that fits Lojban morphology. For example, our good friend Dag from Sweden goes by the name *{la donri}, which is an actual translation of his name to Lojban, which I would highly encourage. If I were to translate my name (it fits morphology unaltered, so why bother changing it?), it would be *{la sanga}. We also have people that pick creative names for their Lojbanistanian green card, like kribacr (a clever altering of kribacru), clsn (our friend Mark Shoulsen), selckiku (whom we affectionately call *{selkik}, and if I remember correctly, this is a cute nod to his le speni/le pampe'o by the name of ckiku), bancus (one of many
names that looks like it could be two rafsi stuck together to form a name in valid morphology, or a gismu with a letter stuck on the end, so it could be read as bancu + s an exeeding thing or ban + cus language-expressing thing) and our resident JB and best example of grinning and bearing the painful lojbanisation, djanatyn (Jonathan Strickland, I believe, who we usually call 'djan').

I think it's all in the spirit of fun, and having some kind of Lojbanic name is just being part of the Lojbanic culture along with everybody else. It's just part of the culture, and I don't think anybody that's been part of the community for any decent length of time actually wants to change the naming convention. I doubt you'd go to Japan and bitch about having to Japanify your name (it's actually a law there, if you're a citizen you have to have a Japanese name, even if it's just Japanified and written in katakana) because that's just how things are, so why come to jbogugde and grip about having to Lojbanify your name? Roll with it and come up with something unique! I highly encourage you to translate your name to Lojban as we have very few (one?) people with gismu names, and I'd love to see more of those.

As far as using 'h' goes, I hate the idea, and it confuses me to no end when people use it, especially since h is the capitalised form of ' in Lojban letterals. As it has been mentioned before, it isn't even really a letter, plus it helps when reading words to visually identify lujvo and CV'V cmavo. It's how we do things, so get over it. =P

Also, the denpa bu (full-stop) is just part of the writing system. It isn't so much a glottal stop as an indication that you should stop making sounds, and all things are written as they are spoken, so it really is a letter. la *pause* lindar *pause* is really the appropriate way to say it in Lojban, and for some things like {zo'e ,e zo'e ,e zo'e co'e} it helps to remind the speaker to say "zo-heh eh zo-heh eh zo-heh sho-heh" and not "zo-heeeehh zo-heeehhh zo-heeehhh sho-heh", because were the pause not absolutely explicit, one might be inclined to run the two E sounds together and make them sound really long, which ends up being interpreted as {zo'e zo'e zo'e co'e} (because extended vowel sounds mean nothing other than a possible indication of inebriation in the speaker), which means something -entirely- different (something does something to/with/at something from something, etc. etc., rather than the intended 'something and something and something do
something'). So because there is an -explicit- stop there, it's written, because absolutely everything said is written, and everything written is said.

Anyway, there's my two cents. Forgive me if I'm slightly incorrect on certain matters. In fact, I'll put a disclaimer!

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are of a slightly off-kilter musician and not of the LLG or any of its affiliates. These views do not necessarily reflect the views of the general Lojban community, its members, their mothers, or their pet hamsters (should they own any). If any more informed parties wish to correct any of the information transmitted in this e-mail, please do so and promptly make fun of all parties involved by insulting their intelligence and the way they dress. This transmission is hereby released by the GNU/Lindar license as Free flaming fuel and may be edited to make the author look like an idiot.

<3<3<3

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I'll join this naming tangent!

I chose the lojban name {ku'us} because ku'u is the rafsi for ckunu
(conifer), and my legal american name Oren is Hebrew (אורן) for pine tree.
.ui

.i ta'onai

And I actually like the look of periods in front of attitudinals, because in
my mind attitudinals are like punctuation marks. Well, except that by
definition they don't punctuate so much as freely add attitude anywhere, but
in a sense they do replace certain 'punctuation marks,' for example when
chatting, '!?!?!?' can sometimes be replaced with .o'onai

co'o

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 13:03, Lindar Greenwood <lindarthebard@yahoo.com>wrote:

> > I do wonder about this as Lojban grows and expands, though. I
>
> > wouldn't be surprised if people stop doing this to names eventually,
> > and just use people's names when talking...
> >
> > Chris
>
> When writing, I'll tend to either arbitrarily lojbanise a name, but if a
> name is sufficiently unusual to the Lojbanic-ear, I'll usually use (WARNING:
> EXPERIMENTAL CMAVO FOLLOWS. USE WITH CAUTION AS CMAVO MAY VIOLENTLY COMBUST
> UPON CONTACT WITH PARSERS, TEXT BOOKS, AND SLABU PRENU.) la'oi *name* as it
> makes life easier.
>
> We butcher names because only 'real words' can end in vowels, so to make it
> absolutely clear, names have to end in consonants. Honestly, any Asian
> country will make you do the same thing upon registering as a visitor or
> resident. The general policy in jbogugde is to either grin and bear
> lojbanising your name, or pick a new name that fits Lojban morphology. For
> example, our good friend Dag from Sweden goes by the name *{la donri}, which
> is an actual translation of his name to Lojban, which I would highly
> encourage. If I were to translate my name (it fits morphology unaltered, so
> why bother changing it?), it would be *{la sanga}. We also have people that
> pick creative names for their Lojbanistanian green card, like kribacr (a
> clever altering of kribacru), clsn (our friend Mark Shoulsen), selckiku
> (whom we affectionately call *{selkik}, and if I remember correctly, this is
> a cute nod to his le speni/le pampe'o by the name of ckiku), bancus (one of
> many
> names that looks like it could be two rafsi stuck together to form a name
> in valid morphology, or a gismu with a letter stuck on the end, so it could
> be read as bancu + s an exeeding thing or ban + cus language-expressing
> thing) and our resident JB and best example of grinning and bearing the
> painful lojbanisation, djanatyn (Jonathan Strickland, I believe, who we
> usually call 'djan').
>
> I think it's all in the spirit of fun, and having some kind of Lojbanic
> name is just being part of the Lojbanic culture along with everybody else.
> It's just part of the culture, and I don't think anybody that's been part of
> the community for any decent length of time actually wants to change the
> naming convention. I doubt you'd go to Japan and bitch about having to
> Japanify your name (it's actually a law there, if you're a citizen you have
> to have a Japanese name, even if it's just Japanified and written in
> katakana) because that's just how things are, so why come to jbogugde and
> grip about having to Lojbanify your name? Roll with it and come up with
> something unique! I highly encourage you to translate your name to Lojban as
> we have very few (one?) people with gismu names, and I'd love to see more of
> those.
>
> As far as using 'h' goes, I hate the idea, and it confuses me to no end
> when people use it, especially since h is the capitalised form of ' in
> Lojban letterals. As it has been mentioned before, it isn't even really a
> letter, plus it helps when reading words to visually identify lujvo and CV'V
> cmavo. It's how we do things, so get over it. =P
>
> Also, the denpa bu (full-stop) is just part of the writing system. It isn't
> so much a glottal stop as an indication that you should stop making sounds,
> and all things are written as they are spoken, so it really is a letter. la
> *pause* lindar *pause* is really the appropriate way to say it in Lojban,
> and for some things like {zo'e ,e zo'e ,e zo'e co'e} it helps to remind the
> speaker to say "zo-heh eh zo-heh eh zo-heh sho-heh" and not "zo-heeeehh
> zo-heeehhh zo-heeehhh sho-heh", because were the pause not absolutely
> explicit, one might be inclined to run the two E sounds together and make
> them sound really long, which ends up being interpreted as {zo'e zo'e zo'e
> co'e} (because extended vowel sounds mean nothing other than a possible
> indication of inebriation in the speaker), which means something -entirely-
> different (something does something to/with/at something from something,
> etc. etc., rather than the intended 'something and something and something
> do
> something'). So because there is an -explicit- stop there, it's written,
> because absolutely everything said is written, and everything written is
> said.
>
> Anyway, there's my two cents. Forgive me if I'm slightly incorrect on
> certain matters. In fact, I'll put a disclaimer!
>
> DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are of a slightly off-kilter musician
> and not of the LLG or any of its affiliates. These views do not necessarily
> reflect the views of the general Lojban community, its members, their
> mothers, or their pet hamsters (should they own any). If any more informed
> parties wish to correct any of the information transmitted in this e-mail,
> please do so and promptly make fun of all parties involved by insulting
> their intelligence and the way they dress. This transmission is hereby
> released by the GNU/Lindar license as Free flaming fuel and may be edited to
> make the author look like an idiot.
>
> <3<3<3
>
>
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
> with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
> you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
>
>

>I'll join this naming tangent!
>
>
>I chose the lojban name {ku'us} because ku'u is the rafsi for ckunu (conifer), and my legal american name Oren is Hebrew (אורן) for pine tree. .ui

That's strange! *{ku'u} is a modal of {kulnu}, so perhaps this is not the best choice for a clear interpretation?
Perhaps a better choice would just be *{la ckunu}. Either that, or you could be *{la selku'u} (Hi, my name is Pinecone!).

Honestly, the *lojban thing* + s|n convention is getting stale, especially since there are names that end up "meaning" (it doesn't actually mean anything in Lojban, but we get the idea, like for bancus or kribacr) something when there was no intent. My name is one such thing that ends up 'meaning' something because it's incidentally two rafsi (Hi, my name is 66 feet.) smashed together. Honestly, I'd just assume that your name outside of Lojbanistan was something like "Kooce" or "Kuhuce" were I to see that name, whereas *{la ckunu} is rather Unambiguousâ„¢.

>.i ta'onai
>
>
>And I actually like the look of periods in front of attitudinals, because in my mind attitudinals are like punctuation marks. Well, except that by definition they don't punctuate so much as freely add attitude anywhere, but in a sense they do replace certain 'punctuation marks,' for example when chatting, '!?!?!?' can sometimes be replaced with .o'onai

<scruffy>Second.</scruffy>

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On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 14:06, Lindar Greenwood <lindarthebard@yahoo.com>wrote:

> <scruffy>Second.</scruffy>

Is that like an untidy person saying {.ie} ? Or am I missing the meaning of
'second?'

It was one of the beginner texts I read that suggested the {jbo} + 'n/s'
self-naming convention, and I didn't even realize that my name was an
overloaded rafsi!

I guess I liked the thin veil of mystery; a rafsi and an arbitrary consonant
made my particular choice {ku'us} more subtle. Although in the name of being
direct, clear and Unambiguous (which is kinda the point, right?) I think its
very sensible to adopt a gismu for a name. I think that's what I'll
recommend for any recruits I muster up.

...However, this sort of makes me want to think a bit harder before I reform
my own name. From lojban's rather extensive set of semantic radicals, which
one do I want to have associated with myself? Do I really identify with
pinecones? Yet another existential decision to make!

mu'o mi'e mi

On Sun, 3 Jan 2010, Stela Selckiku wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:23 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I do wonder about this as Lojban grows and expands, though. I
>> wouldn't be surprised if people stop doing this to names eventually,
>> and just use people's names when talking...
>
> Well the compromise that's emerged is the experimental cmavo "la'oi",
> which is like "la" but can be followed by any foreign name (or at
> least any name without a pause in it). Some people have opposed
> "la'oi" as breaking some of Lojban's theoretical parsing qualities,
> which it surely does, but who knows if those particular qualities are
> important. I try not to use "la'oi" in any formal situations, myself,
> but I doubt this level of compromise can be resisted.

Actually, I think ZOhOI ({la'oi} and {zo'oi}) can be parsed just fine (though
it requires pauses/stops/those hated periods before and after the non-lojban
word). It just requires a change to the grammar. I have yet to see any
actual problems.

--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

Society is now one polished horde; formed of two mighty tribes: the Bores and
the Bored.

--Byron

On Sunday 03 January 2010 23:23:52 Christopher Doty wrote:
> I'm not sure I agree with this. Although it is certainly true that
> languages do violence to names when they pronounce them, or when
> converting them from another writing system, they do this in writing
> much less frequently--English speakers don't rewrite the Spanish name
> 'Juan' as 'Whann', for example. Nonetheless, Lojban does at least
> have built-in outs for this.

Some languages do. I've seen a book by Josh McDowell translated to Albanian;
his name was written as "Gjosh Mëkdouël". And in Spanish it's common to
modify foreign names: Luther turns into Lutero, for instance.

Pierre

--
La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre.
Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.

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On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

> And in Spanish it's common to
> modify foreign names: Luther turns into Lutero, for instance.

That was probably Luther -> Lutherus -> Lutero, so it got to Spanish
via Latin rather than directly from German. If it had gone directly it
would have been "Lúter". That's not what Spanish does nowadays though,
modern names from languages that use the Latin alphabet will not
generally change their spelling. "Martin Luther King" remains "Martin
Luther King" in Spanish, not "Martín Lutero King". What does happen is
that transliterations from other alphabets are often different in
Spanish than in English, so for example English "Khomeini", Spanish
"Jomeini".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Adam D. Lopresto <adam@pubcrawler.org> wrote:
>
> Actually, I think ZOhOI ({la'oi} and {zo'oi}) can be parsed just fine
> (though
> it requires pauses/stops/those hated periods before and after the non-lojban
> word).  It just requires a change to the grammar.  I have yet to see any
> actual problems.

It can be done, but it requires some rethinking of the morphology
algorithm. What the PEG algorithm currently does is first break a
string of phonemes into words, so for example "la'oi lopresto" will be
read as three words, "la'oi", "lo" and "presto", before doing any
syntactic parsing of the words. It doesn't care whether there is a
pause/space between "lo" and "presto" or not, or whether "la'oi" is a
defined cmavo or not. Selmaho ZOhOI would require the algorithm to pay
attention to pause/spaces at the syntactic level, which it currently
does not.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jorge Llambas wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Adam D. Lopresto <adam@pubcrawler.org> wrote:
>>
>> Actually, I think ZOhOI ({la'oi} and {zo'oi}) can be parsed just fine
>> (though
>> it requires pauses/stops/those hated periods before and after the non-lojban
>> word). It just requires a change to the grammar. I have yet to see any
>> actual problems.
>
> It can be done, but it requires some rethinking of the morphology
> algorithm. What the PEG algorithm currently does is first break a
> string of phonemes into words, so for example "la'oi lopresto" will be
> read as three words, "la'oi", "lo" and "presto", before doing any
> syntactic parsing of the words. It doesn't care whether there is a
> pause/space between "lo" and "presto" or not, or whether "la'oi" is a
> defined cmavo or not. Selmaho ZOhOI would require the algorithm to pay
> attention to pause/spaces at the syntactic level, which it currently
> does not.

Interesting. How does it deal with ZOI?
--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

Just because I have a short attention span doesn't mean I

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Adam D. Lopresto <adam@pubcrawler.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jorge Llambías wrote:
>> Selmaho ZOhOI would require the algorithm to pay
>> attention to pause/spaces at the syntactic level, which it currently
>> does not.
>
> Interesting.  How does it deal with ZOI?

Once the phoneme string has been split into words, when the parser
runs into an active ZOI (i.e. a ZOI that has not been deactivated by a
preceding magic word) it looks at the following word and keeps it in
memory, then it absorbs all words that don't match that word. When it
runs into a matching word, it closes the ZOI quote. This "keeping in
memory" part is the only part of the grammar that is actually not
really a true PEG. The text inside the ZOI quote might be completely
butchered from the point of view of the foreign language, which could
have different morphological rules than Lojban. From the point of view
of Lojban it is just a string of Lojban words and non-words, but
already processed into "word"-chunks.

This wouldn't work for ZOhOI because now it matters whether these
pseudo-words are separated by pause/spaces or not.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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hmmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding your explanation xorxes but what exactly
would be the difference between {zoi .gy blah blah .gy} and {zo'oi .blah
blah.} where basically "." is the automatic delimiter "word" like ".gy" was
in the {zoi...} phrase?

2010/1/4 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>

> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Adam D. Lopresto <adam@pubcrawler.org>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> >> Selmaho ZOhOI would require the algorithm to pay
> >> attention to pause/spaces at the syntactic level, which it currently
> >> does not.
> >
> > Interesting. How does it deal with ZOI?
>
> Once the phoneme string has been split into words, when the parser
> runs into an active ZOI (i.e. a ZOI that has not been deactivated by a
> preceding magic word) it looks at the following word and keeps it in
> memory, then it absorbs all words that don't match that word. When it
> runs into a matching word, it closes the ZOI quote. This "keeping in
> memory" part is the only part of the grammar that is actually not
> really a true PEG. The text inside the ZOI quote might be completely
> butchered from the point of view of the foreign language, which could
> have different morphological rules than Lojban. From the point of view
> of Lojban it is just a string of Lojban words and non-words, but
> already processed into "word"-chunks.
>
> This wouldn't work for ZOhOI because now it matters whether these
> pseudo-words are separated by pause/spaces or not.
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes
>
>
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>
>

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> hmmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding your explanation xorxes but what exactly
> would be the difference between {zoi .gy blah blah .gy} and {zo'oi .blah
> blah.} where basically "." is the automatic delimiter "word" like ".gy" was
> in the {zoi...} phrase?

The difference is just that "." is not recognized as a word (and a
space " " would do just as well, BTW). What I'm saying is that for
ZOhOI to work, we would be required to treat the pause/space as a new
kind of (pseudo-)word, so that the syntax stage, not just the
morphology stage as now, needs to be made aware of pause/spaces.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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Thanks Craig and others for the great responses! Of course, I shall give
it a little time to settle in. Quirks I like, but upon seeing the first
real Lojban text, the translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, my eyes were
truly bleeding. Even the first blurb of cyrillic that I ever saw was
easier to read than that. It's because how humans read text as opposed to
machines. The parser gobbles up character by character and is not bothered
by how it looks like. But humans don't read that way, except in while
they're learning in childhood. Humans capture entire sentences or at least
parts of them as a whole image, and then break it further down. Make an
experiment: Blur your vision seeing a piece of English text versus Lojban.
Capitals and interpunction stand out and thus give an immediate impression
of the overall structure in English. That makes things a whole lot easier.
With few remaining imperfections that can irritate capture (apostrophe for
genitives, period for abbreviations), this has evolved over centuries for
a good reason and is now thrown out with no adequate replacement.
Beautification is not an end in itself, it has very practical utility.
Think Feng Shui: Although it is quite unscientific as there is no real
energy flowing around, it deals a lot with humans' perception of their
environment. There are more modern approaches now tackling theory of
perception, even preconscious processing, but not all of that is necessary
study, when a little sense for aesthetics helps progress just as well. But
neglecting the mechanisms of human perception will not help gaining
acceptance of a language with an otherwise brilliant concept.

Cheers

Klaus

On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:21:15 +0100, Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>
wrote:

> ...
> There are three; I'll address them individually below. But personally
> I think once you get used to it (which only took me about two weeks)
> they're really not so bad.
>
> ...

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Lojban looks really strange? Indeed indeed indeed... and I feel that goes
along nicely with 'being culturally neutral'

Surely when reading English we recognize the general shapes of words, not
each individual morpheme, tahts why tihs is sltil pertty legilbe. Note that
chinese characters, with distinct shapes, generally are read faster than
alphabetic text. I think that ascii lojban should be no counterexample, and
that the limited number of characters and words may even increase its
potential for speed reading or skimming (with practice, of course).

I think the propinquity and ubiquity of romanized alphabets with Capitals
and punc!uation marks is to blame for lojban looking jarring (as it does to
me too), but I'm sure that I'll get used to it.

co'o

P.S. Actually, I'm also really interested in alternative alphabets or
standardized fonts/ color-coding ideas, but I keep being drawn back to the
universality of ascii, since I don't really see a substantial objective
argument against it.

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 18:30, Klaus F. Abel <kfa@gmx.net> wrote:

> Thanks Craig and others for the great responses! Of course, I shall give it
> a little time to settle in. Quirks I like, but upon seeing the first real
> Lojban text, the translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, my eyes were truly
> bleeding. Even the first blurb of cyrillic that I ever saw was easier to
> read than that. It's because how humans read text as opposed to machines.
> The parser gobbles up character by character and is not bothered by how it
> looks like. But humans don't read that way, except in while they're learning
> in childhood. Humans capture entire sentences or at least parts of them as a
> whole image, and then break it further down. Make an experiment: Blur your
> vision seeing a piece of English text versus Lojban. Capitals and
> interpunction stand out and thus give an immediate impression of the overall
> structure in English. That makes things a whole lot easier. With few
> remaining imperfections that can irritate capture (apostrophe for genitives,
> period for abbreviations), this has evolved over centuries for a good reason
> and is now thrown out with no adequate replacement. Beautification is not an
> end in itself, it has very practical utility. Think Feng Shui: Although it
> is quite unscientific as there is no real energy flowing around, it deals a
> lot with humans' perception of their environment. There are more modern
> approaches now tackling theory of perception, even preconscious processing,
> but not all of that is necessary study, when a little sense for aesthetics
> helps progress just as well. But neglecting the mechanisms of human
> perception will not help gaining acceptance of a language with an otherwise
> brilliant concept.
>
> Cheers
>
> Klaus
>
> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:21:15 +0100, Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> ...
>>
>> There are three; I'll address them individually below. But personally
>> I think once you get used to it (which only took me about two weeks)
>> they're really not so bad.
>>
>> ...
>>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
> with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
> you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
>
>

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 03:03, Oren <get.oren@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lojban looks really strange? Indeed indeed indeed... and I feel that goes
> along nicely with 'being culturally neutral'

But being strange and being culturally neutral are completely
different things. A monolingual speaker of English can also look at a
text in Japanese or Chinese (assuming it is written left-right) and
get some sense of the structure from the punctuation. Likewise with,
say, Arabic, assuming said speaker knows about the writing direction
difference. But with Lojban, there simply isn't anything that lets
you structure the text in this way, and the things that you think
should structure the text (like periods and commas) are doing
something totally different. You can be culturally neutral without
making it extremely difficult to parse a text from sight...

> P.S. Actually, I'm also really interested in alternative alphabets or
> standardized fonts/ color-coding ideas, but I keep being drawn back to the
> universality of ascii, since I don't really see a substantial objective
> argument against it.

I agree that something else would probably be best, although it does
have the problem of not being as "universal," although in the era of
Unicode and easily-modified keyboard layouts, I'm not sure that the
universality of the Latin system should be a motivation to not try and
develop something new..

Chris

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> But being strange and being culturally neutral are completely

> different things. A monolingual speaker of English can also look at a
> text in Japanese or Chinese (assuming it is written left-right) and
> get some sense of the structure from the punctuation. Likewise with,
> say, Arabic, assuming said speaker knows about the writing direction
> difference. But with Lojban, there simply isn't anything that lets
> you structure the text in this way, and the things that you think
> should structure the text (like periods and commas) are doing
> something totally different. You can be culturally neutral without
> making it extremely difficult to parse a text from sight...

While these may be valid points, I have to point out something (and I was guilty of the same thing at one point).

Do you actually speak Lojban? No? Oh, okay, then shut up. =P (zo'o)

You find yourself caught up in these little minor imperfections (I was the exact same way) and you're not actually learning Lojban. The more you learn, the more you realise -why- things are the way they are. We can address absolutely every one of your concerns, or you can figure out the answers by learning Lojban. Hell, I'm also learning Japanese! I could gripe about how kanji are WAY TOO HARD TO LEARN, or about how there aren't any spaces (Oh and believe you me, I did bitch about them), but once I sat down and just started learning how things are done, I realised that it's with good reason, and it's around because it works. We have punctuation, but everything written in Lojban is said in Lojban, so we start sentences with {.i} instead of capitals and (optionally) end them with {vau) instead of periods. We've been doing it for at least twenty years and it's worked out pretty well so far. =P

So, to address your concern in your previous paragraph, the quick-reading aspect of Lojban is there, you just don't know quite what you're looking for. When you're really exposed to Lojban, you'll notice that every gismu is CVCCV or CCVCV, one of two magical five-character sets with a single consonant and a paired consonant. Every cmavo is .VV, CV, or CV'V, (oh yeah, and there are some CV'VV cmavo, but those are experimental) which helps pull it out and draw it to the eye, because were there not a full-stop in front of the VV cmavo, I would run right over it and accidentally blend it in with the previous or next word, get confused because it doesn't make sense, and then have to reread it. Then CV'V and CV just look unique enough, they're obviously shorter than gismu, and it's just easy to pick out. Finally, in lujvo they're usually EXTREMELY obvious because they're way effing longer than any other word, and half the time they have .y'y floating around
somewhere in there. Each word is carefully constructed with a particular purpose in mind, and if you spend the time to learn it, you realise why things are the way they are. Lojban reading relies heavily on word -size- more so than word -shape- or punctuation, so like the grammar, it's just as unusual to the English-eye. When you first start, it looks like *GIANT WALL OF TEXT WTF IS THAT A FULLSTOP IN -FRONT- OF AN I?*, but when you progress, it looks like *.V CV CV'V CVCCV CV CCVCV CV CV CVCCV .V CV CCVCV*, which breaks apart more cleanly. Even with that being a huge jumble of nonsense, you can glean just from position and size that somebody is probably saying {.i mi/do *gismu* lo/le *gismu*} etc etc.

It's a right of passage to find something wrong with Lojban and then try to bring it up like you're going to improve the language before you even learn how to speak it. Everybody did that, myself included. So we're not "making it extremely difficult to parse a text from sight...", we've made it really easy for LOJBAN speakers to parse a text from sight. You're still thinking in English, and you need to start Thinking With Portals si Lojban.

> I agree that something else would probably be best, although it does
> have the problem of not being as "universal," although in the era of
> Unicode and easily-modified keyboard layouts, I'm not sure that the
> universality of the Latin system should be a motivation to not try and
> develop something new..

Spend a few minutes browsing http://jbotcan.org/ideas/ and pick one you like. I did "larlermorna", there are a few more floating around there, there are some linked on lojban.org, and there are a million scripts in existence that you could potentially modify to work with Lojban. Keep in mind two things: 1. Make sure that a human could write it with a real pen on real paper. 2. If it's just a letter-for-letter change with no difference from what we have now (i.e. there's nothing featural about it), at least two people are going to say it's stupid and that you should fall in a hole. My script (larlermorna) has this handy ability to be written multiple ways and directions with the same amount of legibility, it has a diacritic system, and you can get artsy-fartsy with it and it's still legible. There are plenty of others that have interesting features, so take a look at the ones you can find on the Lojban website as well.

---

So in short, we do things for a reason, and when you really grasp the language, you'll see why we aren't keen on changing such things and why we have things the way they are. Loglan has been around for nearly 60 years, Lojban has been around for twenty-two (coming on twenty-three), so I think at this point we're pretty sure where the full-stop goes. =P

I encourage you to continue to ask questions about why things are the way they are, but I assure you wholeheartedly that you aren't going to change anything about Lojban until you're able to explain, in Lojban, why it should be changed. As far as I remember, there were -two- changes made to Lojban since its inception; one was removing the word for "mushroom" (oldbies like to gripe about this, but I don't get it, especially since we have a word for fungus already), and one was the "xorlo" rule, redefining {lo}, which to this very day confuses some people that learned pre-xorlo Lojban, causes some ugly arguments to pop up from time to time regarding -exactly- how it works, and caused a huge amount of grief and stress for the people administrating Lojban at the time regarding whether or not they would do it, how they would employ the changes, what exactly it changed, and so on. ((In case you're wondering, {lo} used to be more specific than {le}, and now
it's less specific.)) So you can see why we aren't keen on changing things.

Thank you for taking the time to address your concerns with us! Please ask more questions, stop by the Lojban IRC channel, and even e-mail me personally if you like (I'm always glad to answer questions). We love inquisitive students, because that shows everybody that you're interested! Study study study!

((As a side note for everybody else on the list: 1. Why do people get so bent out of shape over that mushroom gismu (gumri?) that was dropped from the list? 2. Can we make an official FAQ regarding the frequent suggestions from super newbies (i.e. all the questions/complaints/suggestions I had when I started in July) so we don't have to keep explaining why we don't have an alternate script, why we don't have capital letters, why {lo mi co'e} isn't a me-ish something, why we're not better or worse than Esperanto because they aren't the same language nor do they have the same end-goals, why Unambiguousâ„¢ doesn't mean that you'll never be misunderstood (I remember somebody on Twitter saying that she'll never learn Lojban and/or actively hates it because she likes the syntactic ambiguity of English, which is silly because Lojban can easily surpass English metaphor, and even say things more vaguely or even nonsensically than English could even dream of), and
why we laugh when people point out why Lojban is a poor choice for an int. aux. lang.))

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On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Lindar Greenwood

<lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:

> 2. Can we make an official FAQ regarding the frequent suggestions from super newbies

There's:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Frequently+Asked+Questions+About+Lojban

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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Did take heed of the FAQ first of course, taking special note of section
PS1 saying which parts are 'essentially stable'. In software development
that would translate to 'beta', meaning the functionality is finalized and
remaining bugs should be minor, but a few things are still being ironed
out. In practice most often these things relate to user experience, which
led me to think the case is quite comparable.

Please understand that this is not meant to come across as bullying. The
'super newbie' stands before the decision to invest significant effort to
learn a language he is most likely interested in using for communication
rather than just historic or linguistic studies. For a conlang as opposed
to an ethnic language, into this decision goes how big is the current user
base, what are its prospects for growth, what is the leadership like, etc.
Has the number of active users and the fanbase experienced viral growth,
or has it been 'essentially stable'. If those nagging suggestions keep
coming, and even resemble each other, a product designer in an industrial
enterprise would be prompted to respond. What this response is like, I am
finding out by doing this. No offense intended.

Thanks for your patience, cheers

Klaus

On Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:17:03 +0100, Jorge Llambas <jjllambias@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Lindar Greenwood

> <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> 2. Can we make an official FAQ regarding the frequent suggestions from
>> super newbies
>
> There's:
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Frequently+Asked+Questions+About+Lojban
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes
>
>

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On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Oren <get.oren@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> ...However, this sort of makes me want to think a bit harder before I
> reform my own name. From lojban's rather extensive set of semantic radicals,
> which one do I want to have associated with myself? Do I really identify
> with pinecones? Yet another existential decision to make!
>
> mu'o mi'e mi
>

While I've never minded your "ku'us", I too wondered where it was from.
Say, here's a plan: use a gismu + aribitrary consonant (like bancus does) to
change your name to "ckunuj". That will keep your readers wondering if you
are a confier, a book sandwich (Tanach + Talmud?), or simply a random
collection of phonemes. (I considered using pseudo-lujvo cmevla when
transliterating the names in Esther, (hence vactic -> the apropos "evening
trickster" for Vashit), but gave it up as unworkable in general, and went
for (subjective) euphony instead).

--gejyspa