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On Jan 17, 2006, at 9:52 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
On 1/14/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote:On Jan 14, 2006, at 6:18 PM, Jim Henry wrote:IMO this is an excessively fine phonetic distinction to make in an auxlang.I must not be clear here. It's the same as Esperanto 'dia' and 'dja'. What I'm wanting, really, is to have words like Spanish 'dia' without too complicated a pronunciation and stress system.As you said recently, maybe it was a mistake to drop the semivowel letters and give |i| and |u| two different pronunciations.
I'm beginning to think so. As it stands, you're given the option of pronouncing a diphthong as two separate vowels, as long as the word is stressed AS THOUGH it were a diphthong. That is, 'taima' can be, preferably, TAI-ma, or TA-i-ma.
OTOH, it never occurred to me that I could go at it the other way, saying that Y can be pronounced like I if you can't quite make the diphthong — that way, I don't need that as though business.
1. I think having /di.a/ in phonetic contrast with /dja/ is a bad idea for an auxlang. 2. But if you're going to have contrasts like that, why not have distinct letters for /j/ and /i/? 3. By symmetry with 2, why not also have distinct letters for /w/ and /u/, even if you don't have contrasts like /dwa/ vs. /du.a/?
Sure. The only problem with that is that it uses Y up, which I now have for /Z/. If I were to do that, I'd really have to do away with c for /tS/ and j for /dZ/, switch j to the /Z/ sound, and represent the affricates as 'tx' and 'dj'. Which is a bit off-putting. OTOH, it would make for more symmetry, as the affricate ts, and possible other affricates — kx, ps, etc. — are represented with two letters.
On another topic, have you given any more thought to stabilizing the grammar [and orthography] for a while and trying to write and post a fair amount of stuff in Ceqli, to see how well it works? If you were to stabilize the language, I might would take some time to translate stuff into it -- right now it seems kind of pointless, though.
I sure have, and when I do get around to it, it will largely be because of your urging and assistance. go fala zi!
Rex May rmay@hidden.email See some of my cartoons at: http://homepage.mac.com/rmay/ NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!