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Hello, and welcome! This is Lojban Radio! coi fi'i .i ti jbocradi
I'm your host Matt Arnold, mi'e mat.arnold
known to the Lojban community as Eppcott. poi la .epkat cmene mi le lojbo cecmu
This is a computer audio periodical .i ti skami sance karni
for speakers and enthusiasts fo lo tavla je se cinri
of Lojban, the logical language. po la lojban po'u le logji bangu
September 27, 2005. detri li so pi'e reze pi'e renonomu
This episode will feature:
Pronouncing "o"
The Holoalphabetic Sentence
Phrasebook Part 2
Lojban As An International Auxiliary Language
Thank you to the listeners for the interest and encouragement you've all expressed since the first episode. Of course, with this attention on audio, came a renewed emphasis on pronunciation-related questions. Many of you noticed that when I used one Lojban word in the middle of an English sentence, I tended to Anglicize the pronunciation. For instance, I pronounce the "o" in Lojban with an American English accent whenever I drop it into an English sentence. I can adopt a correct accent when speaking an entire Lojban phrase, but it's extremely difficult to switch between accents from one word to another.
One thing we learned was that the pronunciation instructions in Lojban learning materials are interpreted differently by British Lojbanists than by Americans. In England, the words top, bottle, flop, and pot are pronounced with a sound similar to "aw" in law. In America, they are like the "ahh" that you say for the doctor. The book "What Is Lojban" makes it clear that the "a" is pronounced as in father or the American pronunciation of "top" and that "o" is pronounced as in "joke" or "note." CLL says on page 12 it's pronounced as in "dome." This is to keep the vowel sounds as easily distinguishable as possible.
So what is the correct way to pronounce "o" in Lojban? Here are some samples. First "o" as it is pronounced in English. Notice that it was rounded into an "oo" sound at the end. That's incorrect. The Lojban "o" is pronounced as in Spanish, as heard here. French speakers also pronounce "o" purely. Here are the sounds back-to-back for comparison. The distinction of a pure vowel is that the mouth holds still while pronouncing it and there is a crisp break in sound instead of a blend.
Fortunately Lojban does not use the "o" "u" combination, so the mispronounciation of "o" is unlikely to be misinterpreted. The only important thing in pronouncing Lojban is to keep the vowels from sounding like each other so that you don't speak the wrong word. Beyond that, anything goes. A spectrum of accents is inevitable, and the global diversity should be welcomed.
With this in mind, I wanted Lojbanists to record themselves speaking the same sentence. It didn't take long before a short text was found that uses all the sounds in the language. Since Lojban is a phonetic language, this means a text which uses every sound also uses every letter. This is called a holoalphabetic sentence, or pangram. English speakers are familiar with the pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The Lojban pangram which has been chosen is {.o'i mu xagji sofybakni cu zvati le purdi}. This means, "caution: five hungry Soviet cows are in the garden." The following speakers are Theodore Reed, Christopher Zervic, Bruce Webber, Pierre Abbat, Hal Fulton, Adam Raizen, and xorxes.
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