"mz"; buffer vowels

[Julian Pardoe <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!jbdp>]

(Just to show that I am following what's going on even if I'm not
contributing much.)

> ... to require the name "*djeimz." to be changed, since "mz" is
> not a permissible medial.

What did little "mz" do to anybody to deserve this fate?  (And how
come "ns" didn't do it too?)

> I just don't buy this concept of Lojban as a CV only language.

Me neither!  The argument sounds somewhat bogus to me.  I can't quite
put my finger on what's wrong.  I suppose a Japanese or Polynesian
speaker of Lojban might tend to a fully buffered dialect (except fopr
nasal plus stop), so in that sense it corresponds to a linguistic
``reality''.  However, it seems a pretty surface phenomenon, one of
realization.  Underneath, especially when looking at word structures,
the importance of the "CCV" pattern seems to be fairly basic.

I'm a bit worried about how I'd cope with buffer vowels in practice.
(And like many English English speakers I'm not too good with "r"s so
I'm going to need one if I'm going to cope with words like {gugdrne-
tiopia} -- or is {gugdyrnetiopia} a valid realization?) I don't think
[I] would be available to me.  Certainly, when I speak Esperanto I
use an [i] different to the one I use in English and it encroaches on
[I]'s space rather.  In my Esperanto (and presumably Lojban) accent
there seems to be no room for [I] between [i] and [@].  On the other
hand [y] seems too prominent to be a buffer vowel.

PS: London Lojbanists, how about arranging a meeting some time!

-- julian --