[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: [ceqli] Re: Revising the alphabet!




On Jan 22, 2006, at 3:39 PM, mr_tines wrote:

--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Rex May <rmay@m...> wrote:

I hereby propose:


TC as in CHew
DJ as in Joe

The increased number of consonantal sounds starts to make the
pronunciation of the language more complicated; such digraphs could
arise accidentally in agglutinations.

Actually, there aren't any phonetic changes, just orthographic. "C" originally = /tS/, "J" originally /dZ/, now realized as 'tc' and 'dj". It does make it look more complicate orthographically, but the phonetics are the same. And given the wordshape rules, such digraphs wouid never arise. In fact, I'm inclined to reject the term 'digraph' for this phenomenon, because to me, a 'digraph' is a single sound represented by two letters, like English 'th'.

Alas, we can't do much about it if we stick with the Roman/ASCII
alphabet.  Even adopting X for the CHew sound (as a softening of the
Greek &#935; which has the same shape), we're still stuck with a double
letter form for the latter sound.  Even broadening to Latin-1 doesn't
give a suitable other choice for either - without doing something
horrible like putting Ñ for NG, and shuffling a lot of letters about
to take advantage of freeing-up Q.

The whole point of the change was to make everything symmetrical, so to speak. Unu sono, unu litero.


Rex May
rmay@hidden.email
See some of my cartoons at:
http://homepage.mac.com/rmay/
NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!