I think it reflects perfectly the lojbanic duality between formality
and metaphoric thinking.
To me, the grid system is the counterpart of the formal grammar and
the flexibility in writing the single letters (prolongating the one
that fits best) is the counterpart of the metaphoric thinking induced
by tanru (and by zo'e and by the other hundreds of ways we can use to
make lojban a human language).
I guess we would need more people trying to use it to find if there's
anything that is hard to use or potentially unclear and so on.
Too bad we'll never really use it, but I think it's worth of being
fully documented and it would be extremely good if someone would
produce beautiful texts in it.
remo
It would be lovely to have a medium in which people used this exclusively. It would hammer out the bugs very quickly! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
First of all I thought it would be constructive to post this link:
http://www.ccelian.com/ElianScriptFull.html
It explains *a lot* :) Especially how this would look like in handwriting.
I really like this idea. One question though: where's {y}? :)
--
Ecce Jezuch
"Penance cannot absolve you sin;
All your belief cannot absolve your sin" - D. Draiman
LOL.
That would enormously increase the time needed for a translation and
reducing by the same amount the number of potential readers :)
remo
Actully, I was mostly interested in the historical part and where this all comes from. It gives the impression that it is well thought-out, not just another ad-hoc idea ;)
Sorry for creating even more confusion.
> > I really like this idea. One question though: where's {y}? :)
>
> Okay, since we've got so much confusion here, I will be very explicit.
I figured how it basically works the pictures alone, but i missed the {y} part.
--
Ecce Jezuch
"Silence has a definition, vocabulary of muted diction
Precise thought to miscomprehend, ambiguity in high resolution
Articulate expletive fiction open to misinterpretation - so precise"
- J. Walker
Apart from the fun and the beauty of the script, I think we could use
it in the mythological description of Lojbanistan.
We might create some pictures of ancient scrolls or of graffiti on a
rock with text that uses this script.
Then write a report on how Lindar managed to discover that, in
reality, those were inscriptions of early lojbanists of hundreds and
hundreds years ago.
We have an artificial language and an imaginary country, why not a
mythical history? :)
Creating new and inventive ways to write Lojban that each internally
preserve desirable lojbanic qualities, with no expectation that they
will ever catch on, and creating beautiful things with them is a hobby
nearly as old as the language itself. Seriously, the CLL mentions
Cyrillic (an actually practical one, for jbopre in Slavic countries)
and Tengwar. This sort of thing is in a very real sense the most
popular artistic tradition of the Lojban community.
So, the point is joy. And art, without which no community can thrive.
It is entirely useless, but it is fun and beautiful and that's good
enough for me.
(And it reminds me that I need to get around to digitizing some of my
own Roman-alphabet Lojban calligraphy.)
mi'e .kreig.daniyl.
noi zu stidi su'o ve pensniste ku ku'i na stidi .ai le du'u plixau
Sent from my iPad
--
You need to mark where a brivla ends somehow, so that we know which
syllable to stress.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
I like the dot inside the vowel to mark stress.
> This does present one small problem in that {.uai} can be written,
> despite that triphthongs are not permitted in Lojban. If anybody can
> think of a solution, I'd love to hear it, but I spent a lot of time
> messing with the vowel grid and never came up with a decent
> replacement.
The PEG morphology allows the eight triphthongs, and CLL has at least
one example with triphthongs. So I would say it's a feature rather
than a bug.
> Finally, for those that still don't quite get it, there's a tutorial
> here:
>
> http://jbotcan.org/ideas/src/1289250735647.png
>
> I didn't include everything, but all of this together should give you
> a fairly good idea of how to do this. It can also be written top-to-
> bottom. =D
How about this for a variation:
For a CCV syllable, you can write the second consonant inside the
first one, and the vowel inside the second consonant. For a CVC
syllable, you can write the second consonant to the right of the vowel
inside the first consonant. That way each syllable is always a single
block, and you can immediately tell how many syllables there are.
(This would effectively become a syllabary.)
Right. I think it looks better when the central parts of all the
blocks are aligned, so that the "ger" syllable doesn't look like it
fell off the line.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Mturniansky/Vlapir#5537576240006013778
--gejyspa
--gejyspa
Stress.
That means it's stressed, I think.
What about a consonant followed by a diphthong beginning "i" or "u", such
as "ckankua" and "martio"?
Pierre
--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.
--gejyspa
And you put the underlined or overlined vowel inside the consonant?
Pierre
--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.
>
> http://jbotcan.org/ideas/src/1289248658702.png
> Emphasis and slaka bu! Note that the slaka is a single half-length
> vertical line. The example reads, as it says next to it, {.lE,os.}.
> Note the denpa bu surrounding!
> The example(s) below it demonstrates the use of an emphasis marker.
> Dangerously close to denpa bu, but unmistakable because it can -only-
> appear inside of a phoneme, whereas denpabu before a consonant appears
> -next- to the consonant. So... a bit convoluted, but it makes sense.
>
If you don't want to confuse everyone and his brother (well, okay,
me) you should write that both on the picture and on this email as
"LE,os", not "IE,os" since in a san serif font, you can't tell the
difference between lowercase L and uppercase i. It left me scratching
my head for ten minutes because I kept saying, "but shouldn't that be
just an overline?"
--gejyspa
"ko ciska xa tarmi so marna pelji fi'e la lindar"
--gejyspa
Actually, I figured that out a few minutes afterwards (but I was
already on the way to work so couldn't follow up), so the vowels are
no problem. Glad you like my mnemonic (I've made up hundreds for
Scrabble purposes). But no one has said word one about my larlermorna
monogram. Does that mean no one liked it and are just being polite?
:-(
--gejyspa
--gejyspa
The dot goes under the vowel, but in front of the consonant.
I would rather use the unsassigned symbol (voiced counterpart of "x")
for the glottal stop plus vowel though.
Only in front of a vowel, the dot is fine around cmevla. That way you
never need to leave a vowel hanging alone, which can be confusing. I
notice that when writing vertically you put the dot in front of the
vowel, and when writing horizontally you put it under the vowel. That
makes some sense, but it can be confusing. I think it's better to
always have a proper consonant enclosing a vowel, so there is never
any doubt that it's a vowel.
The PEG morphology prefers the other, because it doesn't like
syllables without an onset.
From the point of view of the grammar, there is no difference at all
between them. The comma never makes a phonemic difference. If you use
it, it's just for decorative purposes. It's unfortunate that it was
ever even added to the Lojban alphabet.
> Meh. As I said, it doesn't matter to me. Personally, I treat the {aio} as a
> triphthong. The difference in pronunciation between {a,io} and {ai,o} is
> negligible.
But whot you wrote is, I think, .a.ionys. (it's a pause, not a comma). That makes me willing to propose that the so-far-unused place be used for "no consonant", where you have to write a vowel and only it. It's of course only necessary for writing non-lojban stuff, hence marginal ;)
--
Ecce Jezuch
"Incisions mending the wounds within
Surroundings breach the surface of your skin
Progress in static. Life has died
Eyes and minds glint - Glints collide" - J. Kidman
(Upon closer inspection it looks more like {.ai.onys.} or {.[lr].onys.}, sorry ;) )
--
Ecce Jezuch
"Reality - this spiteful snake,
Rearing its ugly head, venom dripping from its grin,
As it tosses yet another obstacle in our way" - T. Haake
CLL says: "Commas are never required: no two Lojban words differ
solely because of the presence or placement of a comma." (Ch. 3 Sect.
3)
> I thought triphthongs were illegal, and essentially that says they -
> are- legal.
No, two vowels written together do not necessarily form a diphthong
(i.e. one syllable), and three vowels written together do not
necessarily form a thriphthong (i.e. one syllable).
"aio" is two syllables no matter how you split them, just like "aro"
is two syllables. You can write the decorative comma as "ar,o" or as
"a,ro", but it doesn't make any differrence to the morphology.
As for thriphthongs being "illegal", CLL contains the name
".i,iai,ii,iai,ion." as an example, using the triphthong "iai" twice,
but it may very well say somewhere else that triphthongs are illegal.
The morphology section in CLL is not 100% consistent.
> While it claims to not make a difference, I do hear/say one
> between .A,ionys. and .AI,onys.
That you can make and hear a difference doesn't mean the difference is
relevant. As a Spanish speaker I can pronounce "r" as an alveolar tap
or a trill and hear the difference, but it won't make any difference
to Lojban. Whichever one I use or hear, it's the same word in Lojban.
"Being the same word" is relevant in very few contexts anyway. You can
use "a,ionys" as the opening delimiter in a ZOI quote, and "ai,onys"
as the closing delimiter, and it will work, because it's the same
word, just as if I use "ra" with a tap as the opening delimiter and
"ra" with a trill as the closing delimiter.
But "y" syllables don't count.
In any case, stress is not relevant for cmevla. So no matter where you
put the stress, and no matter how you split the syllables, you are
pronouncing the same word in all cases.
Except that xorxes and I disagree on that point. I believe that
stress is salient feature of cmevla and that la martin and la marTIN
are not the same person/animal/thing (unless that person answers to
both names).
--gjeyspa
The PEG morphology doesn't distinguish them. That means that "zoi
.marTIN. whatever .martin." is a valid sumti. You will need to use a
different morphology if they are to count as two different words.
Syntactically, they're unambiguously the same word.
Semantically... well, they're probably the same in most cases, but as
a simple matter of pragmatics I'm pretty sure that if you know a
Martin and a Martín who both speak Lojban and are in the room, and you
say "doi .martin. mi do prami" nobody's going to get confused about
which one you're declaring your feelings for.
That's what I'm saying, yes.
> Semantically... well, they're probably the same in most cases, but as
> a simple matter of pragmatics I'm pretty sure that if you know a
> Martin and a Martín who both speak Lojban and are in the room, and you
> say "doi .martin. mi do prami" nobody's going to get confused about
> which one you're declaring your feelings for.
At least nobody who is also aware of their non-Lojban name. But that
could also be true even if they both shared the same identical
non-Lojban name. In most cases people will figure out which ".martin."
you mean just from their knowledge of the situation, who you are
looking at when speaking, or many other clues.
True. But I think it's perfectly plausible, if not even remotely
common, for the morphologically-irrelevant difference in pronunciation
of the same cmevla to be relevant in a specific instance. (Plus,
pronouncing somebody's name with the stress they like on it is
friendly.)
But yeah, there's no doubt about the fact that, from a morphological
and syntactical standpoint, .martin. and .marTIN. are the same name.
Ditto .ai,on,ys., .a,iO,nys., and any other variation in placement of
the commas and the stress. As far as the grammar is concerned, it is
as irrelevant as the fact that I say the name with a rounded .y. This
isn't a matter for disagreement; it's a feature of the official
parser.
- mi'e .kreig.daniyl.
(which by the way is why I often round my .y.'s - otherwise I catch
myself saying .dani,l., which is not my name.)
Yes, that's similar to pronouncing a Chinese name with the tone they
like, even though tone is irrelevant in Lojban. For personal names, it
is polite to at least try to use whatever the name bearer likes, when
you are aware of it and you are able to manage it.
But for names of places, products, and so on, insisting that everyone
should use one or another of the permissible forms is not really
practical.
> But yeah, there's no doubt about the fact that, from a morphological
> and syntactical standpoint, .martin. and .marTIN. are the same name.
> Ditto .ai,on,ys., .a,iO,nys., and any other variation in placement of
> the commas and the stress. As far as the grammar is concerned, it is
> as irrelevant as the fact that I say the name with a rounded .y. This
> isn't a matter for disagreement; it's a feature of the official
> parser.
At least a feature of the official-to-be parser. I don't know what the
currently official parser does, since it doesn't really have a fully
functional morphology.
I know we can either a) go around with the same conversation again
or b) say "look it up the last time we did" but I'm forced once again
to point out that unlike tone or allophones, stress is recognized by
lojban as a language feature that makes a meaningful difference in
utterances, so to say that it doesn't make a difference in cmevla in
particular, is an arbitrary ruling (made by xorxes?) that I see no
support for. And to refer to your friend martin (=MARtin) as
"marTIN" is just plain wrong. la'e zo marTIN na du la'e zo MARtin .i
seni'ibo zo marTIN na du zo MARtin (I think I'll start referring to
xorxes as "djordj" and see how that goes over).
--gejyspa
Oh, and to amplify the "... I see no support for" see CLL, chapter
4, section 8.10, point 4):
"4)
They may be stressed on any syllable; if this syllable is not the
penultimate one, it must be capitalized when writing. Neither names
nor words that begin sentences are capitalized in Lojban, so this is
the only use of capital letters."
Which means that stress MUST be a differntiating feature.
--gy
It's not just in cmevla, it also doesn't make a difference in cmavo.
ba'e (without any stress), BA'e and ba'E are all the same word. I
suppose you don't dispute that.
It is only brivla that require penultimate stress, the other words
just usually follow suit, but don't require it. You are also free to
stress more than one syllable in a cmevla, which you can't do in
brivla, no matter how long.
> And to refer to your friend martin (=MARtin) as
> "marTIN" is just plain wrong. la'e zo marTIN na du la'e zo MARtin .i
> seni'ibo zo marTIN na du zo MARtin (I think I'll start referring to
> xorxes as "djordj" and see how that goes over).
"xorxes" and "djordj" are two different names in Lojban, but it
doesn't bother me at all to be called "djordj", it is actually one of
my nicknames.
Also, of course, Jorge and George are two different names in English.
And in Spanish. (Although if you have something in Spanish being
Lojbanized as ".djordj.", it would have to be spelled "yorll" or
something, which is phonotactically invalid.)
- mi'e .kreig.
Of course I don't dispute that. That's explicitly stated in the
CLL in that same chapter, section 2.5: "There is no particular stress
required in cmavo or their compounds. Some conventions do exist that
are not mandatory", and then goes on to explain the constraints to
that rule. This is the exact opposite of what is has by cmevla, which
says you MUST show their stress if it's not penultimate.
--gejyspa
Of course, and I contend that xorXES and XORxes are two different
names in lojban.
--gejyspa
Yorll is impossible, a word can't end with "ll" in Spanish, but the
name "Yoryi" exists, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoryi_Morel
Yup, hence the "phonotactically invalid" part.
> name "Yoryi" exists, for example:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoryi_Morel
Hm. While I'd be inclined to Lojbanize that with an s on the end, I
guess it could be truncated instead. Hadn't thought of that. (Going
backwards from Lojban names into natlangs always takes some
inventiveness, as it's the inverse of a process that is both
unstandardized and lossy.)
I wasn't actually suggesting that "djordj" would be a good
Lojbanization of Spanish "Yoryi". I don't know how he pronounced his
name, but with my pronunciation it would go into Lojban as "corc(is)"
or "jorj(is), not as "djordj", and I suppose many would rather go with
"ioriis".
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