Re: subordinate interrogatives

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Mark:
> >{kuau} is just an alternative to {loy duu}. It is not approved by
> >Lojban Central, because it is motivated solely by conceptual
> >elegance, and not by dire need.
> >The issue Jorge address is: What is the logical alternative to the
> >colloquial {mo kaw}? [& Xorxes gives the answer.]
> Your orthography gets harder to follow by the month.  Why "kuau" for
> "ku'au" but "kaw" for "kau"?  Why isn't it "kuaw"?  At least be
> consistent.

I'm not sure that CVhVV is valid. Anyway, I originally proposed
{kuau} as CVhVhV (I think). Hence {kuau} rather than {kuaw}.

> And what do you get by "loy" instaed of "loi"?  Oh, loi for
> lo'i?

Right.

> It doesn't look to me like you're gaining anything but your own
> aesthetics, which doesn't seem reason enough to change a writing system
> that others are using beyond recognition (you don't go to France and say
> "You know what, guys?  That cedilla is really dumb; from now on I'm writing
> it with an s.")

You might do that to French. With Lojban, there's more of a
presumption of optimality and engineeredness - that the language has
been engineered to make it optimal. Hence one has a correspondingly
greater inclination to engage in such engineering oneself.

More than issues of arbitrary and subjective aesthetics are
involved. The question I ask myself is: if the orthography were being
designed from scratch, which system would one choose? If that
were the question being asked generally, and properly debated
and voted on, then I might be more inclined to go with the collective
choice. But in fact decisions and choices are governed by inertia
and a will to preserve the status quo, and I am disinclined to
myself feel governed by such choices.

> Then again, I hypocritically support "h" as an alloglyph
> for ' in Lojban.  Go figure.
>
> ~mark

That hardly has the same potential for sowing confusion.

coo, mie And