[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On 1/18/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote: > > On Jan 17, 2006, at 9:52 AM, Jim Henry wrote: > > 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. Alternatively, you could drop some of the fricative/affricate contrasts. Dropping all affricates entirely might require too extensive changes to the vocabulary, but maybe making voiceless fricatives contrast with voiced affricates would work. I.e., /s/ - /dz/ /S/ - /dZ/ but no /z/, /ts/, /Z/, or /tS/. Or drop the affricates and have /s/ - /z/ /S/ - /Z/ >OTOH, > it would make for more symmetry, as the affricate ts, and possible > other affricates — kx, ps, etc. — are represented with two letters. Representing all the affricates with two letters (as in Lojban) would also be an improvement, and it wouldn't require reducing your phoneme inventory so wouldn't require changing any words (except in their orthography, of course). > > 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! I look forward to that. You don't have to wait until you're ready to stabilize the language to write more texts in Ceqli, though. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry