Re: logban '

[Mr Andrew Rosta <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Colin (an antiallographist) writes:
> The reason for me is two-fold (and they are related)
>
> 1) 'h' is a letter, and as a letter it is a consonant. Using it
> in lojban distorts the CV structure

In English it counts as a consonant. But in Lojban it wouldn't.
Phoneticians & phonologists have tended to treat h as both
consonant and vowel or as neither. (In terms of phonation
it is like an obstruent but in terms of articulatory stricture
it is like a vowel.) So for Lojban to say it is neither a
C nor a V would be quite well motivated.

> 2) Therefore your -h- rich lojban distorts the (starting to be)
> familiar pattern of lojban words and makes them much harder
> for me to read. (I have to say them out loud to myself, or
> mentally translate them, in order to understand them).

I accept this as a general objection to allography, but note
that a lot of people on the list, including many lurkers,
have spoken out in favour of h as an allograph of '.

The arguments really come down to aesthetics vs. recognizability,
with each alternative facilitating ease of use in some ways.

If one were to prefer to increase recognizability by stamping
out harmless variation, there already exists harmless variation
in Lojban orthography which could be stamped out. For example,
on the whole the presence of spaces between words is optional,
but for me it takes time to spot that something is not a
lujvo but a concatenation of several cmavo. Me being liberal,
I accept this, but on the antivariationist principle there
ought to be rules making it obligatory to concatenate or
not concatenate words. Such rules would not be necessary for
the grammar to work, but they would aid recognition.

----
And