Re: Die Grammatik der Sprache Lingwa de Planeta (LdP)

> A totally unnecessary complication.  If there are no minimal pairs
> (that's the linguistic term) for /t/ vs. /th/, and it "might be also
> pronounced simply as 't'", why not just drop it and change it into _t_?
Basically this is to make some words sound more distinctive. There are
not many words with "th", "kh", "bh", and therefore it's easy to
recognize them. I am not an adherent of excessive simplification of
phonology, because when sounds are too little, a language becomes
somewhat monotonous and word recognition may be impaired. I prefer a
language that sounds vividly and distinctly.
Another reason is that this "tha" for Chinese is exactly the way they
pronounce this pronoun, for them it's more natural and not at all
difficult.


>
> > > 2. What are irregular verbs doing in an international auxiliary
> > language?
> > >
> >
> > The only irregular verb is "bi". It feels good.
>
> Yes, but there are also different classes of verbs with different
> infinitive formations.  Why?  I see no reason to allow either multiple
> inflectional paradigms or irregular verbs (and be it just "to be")
> in an IAL.
>
Well, in fact all the verbs except "bi" are invariable and have the
same form in the infinitive and all the tenses (just particles may be
added), so it should be quite easy to use them.