Re: lojban h

[fschulz@PYRAMID.COM]

Erik Rauch writes:

> Well, as I said in a previous message, I think the ' is more aesthetic
> because of the special status of that letter. And it occurs so often,
> and has such a slight phonetic value, that it looks intrusive as a full-sized
> letter.
>
> Also, consider that we have all gismu being five letters long, and likewise
> the short rafsi, under the loose interpretation, all have three letters.
> This is a neat feature. If you spell it h, then many of the "short" rafsi
> have as many letters as the long ("four-letter") ones.
>

I find koha looks much better than ko'a. Try saying koha and koka.
The h and k have the same phonetic value, and the h can potentially
extend for a much longer time. Devoicing is an articulatory movement
just like stop consonants. I can sense 4 movements when saying koha,
not 3. I dislike hiding a phoneme that really is there, just as
much as any other phoneme. The short rafsi with ' are not really
short since there are 4 phonemes present.
--
        Frank Schulz ( fschulz@pyramid.com )