[a] vs [æ]

[mudri]

I'm wondering whether I'm pronouncing Lojban's 'a' too high, and I can't find a comparison of [æ] and [a] anywhere. It was mentioned somewhere else that Lojbanising the vowel of "hat" is difficult/obfuscating. However, I find it easy to interpret a Lojban 'a' as a plain English 'a' (as in, recognising {la .kamryn.} is easy, but {la .nikylys.} isn't).

Note that my English vowels are from Yorkshire, meaning that the 'a' sound is probably typical of northern England.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 5:04 PM, mudri <jammya...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm wondering whether I'm pronouncing Lojban's 'a' too high, and I can't find a comparison of [æ] and [a] anywhere. It was mentioned somewhere else that Lojbanising the vowel of "hat" is difficult/obfuscating. However, I find it easy to interpret a Lojban 'a' as a plain English 'a' (as in, recognising {la .kamryn.} is easy, but {la .nikylys.} isn't).

Note that my English vowels are from Yorkshire, meaning that the 'a' sound is probably typical of northern England.

I assume æ is the sound of the "a" in hat, yes? I'm not sure what you mean by a Plain English 'a'", since an English 'a' has at least three different pronunciations even without accounting for accents, but these are some examples of words that- for me at least- have the same sounding as:

'a': hot, father, call, dark, far, pall, Iran (la.iran., not "I ran")....

"æ": pat, math, pal, cap, ran....

"A": mate, pail, ray, date....

In Lojban, the first and last are zo.a and lu .ai li'u, respectively. The best way to render æ in Lojban I can think of is lu .ae li'u, but that's not a legal diphthong.

Finally, .ybu isn't usually an "a" in English. It's pronounced exactly the same as "uh", and its sound is usually found as "u" in English words: putt, shut, rudder....

It is of course possible that these example words aren't pronounced the same by both of us, since I speak U.S.E. and you speak B.C.E., but it's my hope they are.

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Jonathan Jones]

Sorry, I made a mistake. Lojban long-a is {.ei}, not {.ai}. {.ai} is long-i.

[Jonathan Jones]

If you ever took Latin, or possibly any of the Romance languages, the vowels possibly excepting .ybu are pronounced exactly the same as in that language.

[mudri]

I learnt Spanish in school, but I don't know whether I was pronouncing the vowels exactly. As for your examples, the 'a' line seems like a random jumble of open-back-ish sounds, with "Iran" fitting on the 'æ' line (basically [ɪ] + "ran"). Our accents are too different to compare.

I've just remembered about a video I made a couple of months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COnrPtFkuxc&feature=plcp. I think I've got better since that, but my 'a' sound is basically the same.

[selpa'i]

.i la mudri cu cusku di'e

> I've just remembered about a video I made a couple of months ago:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COnrPtFkuxc&feature=plcp. I think I've
> got better since that, but my 'a' sound is basically the same.

Your {a}'s are fine.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

--
doị mèlbi mlenì'u
.i do càtlu ki'u
ma fe la xàmpre ŭu
.i do tìnsa càrmi
gi'e sìrji se tàrmi
.i taị bo pu cìtka lo gràna ku


.

[Annie]

Not all the vowels are pronounced the same in French. I would know because I'm taking French, and so is Devin.

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[Annie]

How can quotes be letters, mimilarity symbols, and probably a bunch of other thingshis Besides, do you mean the word "left-brace", or the punctuation? Is "left-brace" Lojban because it doesn't look like it. If it is, how do you pronounce it?

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[Devin Prater]

The braces are there, I believe, to distinguish Lojban text from English in multilingual emails/messages.

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[Annie]

That's what everyone is saying. By the way, if you wanted to write the punctuation left-brace in braille? Also, you still haven't sent me any notes from any of our Lojban textbooks. Remember, you and this group are my only sources for Lojban, because of technical difficulties.

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[Devin Prater]

Annie, I'll get to that, hopefully, LOL. Maybe someone can post the link to the Lessons, the introduction to Lojban, that is. It is on the Internet, and is accessible with Voiceover.

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[Annie]

I hope someone does post the link to get there. Can I use my Refresherbraille?a

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[Pierre Abbat]

On Saturday, November 24, 2012 02:18:07 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> If you ever took Latin, or possibly any of the Romance languages, the
> vowels possibly excepting .ybu are pronounced exactly the same as in that
> language.

Spanish, yes. Portuguese has two 'o' sounds and two 'e' sounds which Lojban
does not distinguish (e.g. 'Cair no poço não posso' = es 'Caer en el pozo no
puedo'). Italian has two 'e' sounds and two 'o' sounds. In French the Lojban
'u' sound is written 'ou', 'e' often reduces to schwa, and there are plenty of
other spellings that don't match sounds.

Pierre
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa

[Devin Prater]

Of course you can.

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 7:08 AM, mudri <jammya...@gmail.com> wrote:

I learnt Spanish in school, but I don't know whether I was pronouncing the vowels exactly. As for your examples, the 'a' line seems like a random jumble of open-back-ish sounds, with "Iran" fitting on the 'æ' line (basically [ɪ] + "ran"). Our accents are too different to compare.

"Iran" has two pronunciations, the "correct" one, wherein the i and a are both short (, fit, pall)), and the English screw-up, in which it sounds like you're saying "I ran (a marathon)".
 

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Annie <park....@asb.gaggle.net> wrote:

How can quotes be letters, mimilarity symbols, and probably a bunch of other thingshis

They aren't. They're just quotes. The stuff inside the quotes is what means those things.
 

Besides, do you mean the word "left-brace", or the punctuation?

Neither.
 

Is "left-brace" Lojban because it doesn't look like it. If it is, how do you pronounce it?

Braces are only for quoting Lojban in a non-Lojban text. They are not used in Lojban at all, and are not a part of Lojban.

[mudri]

I've never heard anyone say "pall", so I can't compare with that. There's also the third, RP way of saying "Iran": something like /ɪˈɹɑːn/. It effectively assumes that what you call the "correct" version (AFAICT) is a Northern pronunciation, and therefore modifies the 'a' to fit with the "bath" vowel ([a~æ] Northern, [ɑː] RP).

I read the Wikipedia page about Iran. It turns out that the "true" pronunciation is [ʔiˈɾɒn]. The [ɒ] sound doesn't occur reliably in AmE, but is bog standard in BrE, at least (except Scottish). We (mi'a) should spell it "Iron" (only in writing it now did I notice that it spells element Fe).

BTW, here's a useful table, if you know IPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects.

[Annie]

Then what's all that stuff about left-brace meaning "is similar to"?

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[Kevin Reid]

On Nov 24, 2012, at 14:55, Annie wrote:

> Then what's all that stuff about left-brace meaning "is similar to"?

From the footer on your messages which says “This Email was sent by a student at School for the Blind”, I guess that you might be using a text-to-speech system. Perhaps it speaks the words “left brace” or “right brace” when it encounters a brace symbol, such as these: { }.

Those symbols are being used to quote actual Lojban words, like this: {simsa}. That was the Lojban word “simsa”, in braces; the word means something like “is similar to”.

--
Kevin Reid <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>

[Annie]

Yay! How was your Thanksgiving? Did you get the e-mail about possessiveshis

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[Annie]

Well see, I have an IPod and Refreshabraille. That's the braille display. I actually have speech off, and the actual words "left brace" or "right brace" come up. That's why I have trouble knowing if that's the symbols or the words.

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[Devin Prater]

Annie, that's why UEB is very, very useful.

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Annie <park....@asb.gaggle.net> wrote:

Well see, I have an IPod and Refreshabraille. That's the braille display. I actually have speech off, and the actual words "left brace" or "right brace" come up. That's why I have trouble knowing if that's the symbols or the words.

Except when we're also talking about them, which we've never done before now, it's always the symbol.

I didn't know braille didn't have a configuration for the symbol itself. I find it odd that it actually spells it out to you.

In any case, on these boards, at least, if you see text like:

left brace mi nelci lo plise right brace,

just remember that everything between "left brace" and "right brace" is the Lojban we are talking about.
 

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On Nov 24, 2012, at 5:19 PM, Kevin Reid <kpr...@switchb.org> wrote:

> On Nov 24, 2012, at 14:55, Annie wrote:
>
>> Then what's all that stuff about left-brace meaning "is similar to"?
>
> From the footer on your messages which says “This Email was sent by a student at School for the Blind”, I guess that you might be using a text-to-speech system. Perhaps it speaks the words “left brace” or “right brace” when it encounters a brace symbol, such as these: { }.
>
> Those symbols are being used to quote actual Lojban words, like this: {simsa}. That was the Lojban word “simsa”, in braces; the word means something like “is similar to”.
>
> --
> Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>
>
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>

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[Pierre Abbat]

On Saturday, November 24, 2012 17:26:17 Annie wrote:
> Well see, I have an IPod and Refreshabraille. That's the braille display. I
> actually have speech off, and the actual words "left brace" or "right
> brace" come up. That's why I have trouble knowing if that's the symbols or
> the words.

What does this look like to you? «mi sitna lo valsi»

mu'omi'e .pier.
--
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci

[Annie]

That was better. It had like the first few words in quutations, and the rest was just Lojban, not enclosed in anything.

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