marc | Re: La letera H / The letter H

• Autor: marc (“marc_hussey”)
• Tema: Re: La letera H / The letter H
• Data: 2008-12-12 18:46
• Mesaje: 2980 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

yes i agree that in words outside of normal conversation and into the
realm of technical/scientific/legal jargon, perhaps the use of the
letter H or other letters or extra root words might be appropriate.

such as in the examples you mentioned like:

- eliminating overly long or clumsily constructed words built from
too many syllables or affixes which may be difficult to pronounce.

- allowing the addition of new root words which better reflect
internationally accepted vocabularly.

in general i'm quite the fan of many features of esperanto such as
it's wide range of affixes and word building which seems to be also
in LFN, tho i havent sat down to go thru the grammar in detail yet.
at times tho in esperanto it was slightly over-done when attempting
to stick to its rules and produced some unrecognisable and cumbersome
words. the choice to buid new vocabularly from too many prefixes &
suffixes attached around single syllable root words when short
international root words were available wasnt always wise.

--- In LinguaFrancaNova@yahoogroups.com, "simon.franova"
<simon.franova@...> wrote:
>
> > i'm only new to LFN, but in general i reckon changes other
> > than those serving to significantly improve a created
> > language are not a good idea.
>
> I agree. We don't want to change things for change's sake.
> There has to be a really good reason.
>
> > ideally a language should only have as many letters, root
> > words and rules of grammar as are absolutely necessary to
> > ensure it can function as well as any other living
> > language for the purpose of accurately conveying thoughts
> > and ideas, while keeping the work-load of learning grammar
> > and vocab to a minimum for the novice.
>
> LFN certainly has very few rules of grammar, and I've been
> trying to tighten up the way they're defined.
>
> LFN also tries to eliminate redundant vocabulary. For
> example, I've just suggested that we don't need "aumenta"
> (to increase) because the idea can be adequately just as
> well by "crese" (to grow).
>
> But you will find quite a large number of technical words
> in the dictionary: medical terms, scientific jargon, and
> culture-specific concepts such as "haicu" and "zagruta".
>
> We could eliminate such words and use longer phrases instead,
> but that would make things cumbersome when technical words
> are actually called for. The technical words are all very
> international, and there's no problem with having them there
> for use in the right context. Most people don't need to
> know most of them, as in any language.
>
> LFN retains the letter H in certain technical words and
> proper names to make these more consistent with the form
> they have in many other languages, and hence easier for
> people to recognize - given that they're not words you'd see
> every day.
>
> Sometimes an H is retained purely to help with pronunciation.
> For example, "Sahara" without the H would be an invalid
> word according to the rules of LFN spelling, because you
> can't have the same vowel twice in a row.  "Sahara" would
> have to become "Sara", and that would be crazy.
>
> So the question is: given that we have to have the letter
> H in a few words, do we accept it as a "proper letter", and
> do we allow it to be pronounced (so that "Sahara" works in
> speech too)? The pronunciation needs to be optional, because
> the sound of [h] is difficult for many people.
>
> It's not a big change; just a tweak of the definition.
>
> Simon
>