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As you may remember I've been having trouble with the
spellings for /L J Z/ in Rhodrese, or rather with how
to spell /gl gn zg/ since the spellings _gl gn sg_ for
/L J Z/ are rather settled. For long /Z/ and /zg/ were
the victims of rather complicated spelling rules,
analogous to the spellings for /dZ/ and /g/ except for
the _s_, and that for /dZ/ before vowels there's also
_j_:
_(e,i,y) _(a,o,u,C,#)
------ ------------ ----------------
/Z/ sg sdg
/zg/ sgh sg
As one of you rightly pointed out _sdg_ was an ugly
kludge, so I decided that /Z/ was spelled _sg_ in all
positions. But how then spell /zg/?[^1] Since I used
_ch, gh_ for /k g/ before _e, i, y_ and _ghl, ghn_ for
/gl gn/ I *could* use _sgh_ (or the horrible-looking
_shg_!), but I dislike it for the same reason I dislike
_ghl, ghn_ for /gl gn/: in _ch, gh_ for /k g/ _h_ is a
silent letter indicating that the pronunciation of the
preceding letter is not affected by the following
letter, but in _ghl, ghn, sgh_, or _shg_, I'd have _h_
indicate that the two other letters not be read as a
digraph but as two separate letters, which is a
different function[^2].
I decided that /zg/ would simply hardly occur, judging
by the Latin dictionary, but that's not quite true by
the Romance dictionary, once I got a searchable version
of it. To be honest most instances of {s)ic} seem to
become /sk/ or reflexes thereof in Romance, but I'm
already leaning towards a scenario where intevocalic
voicing precedes syncope in Rhodrese, and there are
some tantalizing exception in Romnatlangs, like
Portuguese _vesgo_ beside _vesquear_ (BISICARE) --
suggesting a different treatment of pretonic and
posttonic S'C --, French _drague, drage, dr�ge_
beside _dreche_ (DRASICA) and even obviously
unsyncopated forms like Rum. _pierseca_, Logudorese
_persige_, Prov. _persega, presega_ Bearn. _pe(r)sek_,
Catalan _pressec, Port. _pecego_, Prov. _perseguier,
preseguier_, Cat. _presseguer_, Port. _pecegueiro_
(PERSICA, -ARIU); Genoese /reizegu/, Piemontese
/reizi/, Lomb. /rezega/, Prov. /rezegue/ (the
etymologically doubtful _risico, risque_) are
suggestive: perhaps Rhodrese went through a *later*
round of syncope, resulting in /bIz'gja4 'dRazgI
'pREzgI pRIz'gjai4 RI'zgja4/![^3]
I also find the spellings _ghl, ghn_ troublesome for
graphaesthetic reasons: spellings like _ghlorieu,[^4]
ghleur, (e)ghlesge, reghle, hieroghlyf/-ph_ aren't very
attractive! I did consider using an apostrophe (_g'l,
g'n, s'g_) but don't really like it, because there is
no elision taking place -- in fact not even
diachronically in most cases!
Then the other day I incidentally came to read the Wikipedia
article about the interpunct (specifically the sections
on Catalan, Gascon and Occitan aka Proven�al).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct>
(Note: the following character � should be a middot. if
the yahoos mangle it, as is likely, then at least you
know what whatever it looks like should be!)
I've always been somewhat irked by the Catalan _l�l_:
if they have _ny_ then why not _ly_? However that
quaint medieval method of marking elision is somehow
irresistible and may well have existed on the Rhuodre
too, as that is just to the north of Proven�e. It is
easy to imagine a situation where middot and apostrophe
came to be used interchangeably to mark elision, and
then these came to be used interchangeably with _h_ to
distinguish digraphs from letter sequences. I can even
imagine some use of _c�e, g�e_ in place of _che ghe_
etc. in older times. Then the orthography regulators in
the 16th-18th century come along and regulate the use
of the three devices for three different functions:
1. _+h_ to indicate that a _c_ or _g_ is hard before
a following soft vowel.
2. _'_ to indicate elision
3. _�_ to distinguish consonant letter sequences
from digraphs.
To which may be added:
4. The diaeresis to indicate that two vowels in succession
don't stand for a diphthong/digraph.
So that most degenerate word ILLAS ECCLESIAS becomes
_gl'ig�lisg_ which may possibly be an improvement over
_gl'ighlisg_ and is a definite improvement over
_gl'ig'lisg_.[^5] Borgonzays named /'Edg@4/ may presumably
spell it _Ed�gar_, and even _l�l_ may find a use: I
have hitherto assumed that Latin loans like
_entellegent_ are pronounced with /r`/ just like native
words like _belle_ /'bEr`I/, but I now think they may be
spelled _entel�legent_ and pronounced with /l/.
I'm not wholly sold on the middot, though: what to do,
for example in those cases where /zg/ comes before an
_e, i, y_; does BISICAT become _b�s�ghet_ or will the
_gh_ in _b�sghet_ make the middot superfluous? I guess
/zdZ/ would be considered theoretically possible, so
the middot would not make the _h_ superfluous!
Also it rather breaks up the words in a fixed-width
font -- but so does the apostrophe, which I'm however
used to...
There is also the risk, or _res�g_, that Rhodrese turns
even more into looking like a parody on Catalan --
something it is absolutely not intended to be. It
started out as my ideal mix of Italian and French, but
I just know too much and care too much about
naturalism to pursue that scheme _in vitro_, and the
decision to place it geographically in eastern Gaul
inevitably made it somewhat of a mix of French and
Proven�al. Sometimes I'm afraid it's just Proven�al
with diphthongs! :-/
/BP
[^1]: BTW _zg_ is out because Rhodrese _z_ is always an
etymological Greek zeta or derived from earlier
*/dz/, itself from DJ or -C-, in short it used to
be the spelling for /dz/, which only recently
merged with /z/.
[^2]: Also I do for graphaesthetic not want word-final
_ch gh_. This is because I briefly considered
writing every word-final /tS/ with _c_ or _g_ and
every word- final /k/ with _ch_ or _gh_, but
decided against it since it made for a lot of word-
final _ch, gh_ -- even more horrible to my
sensibilities than _ch, gh_ for /tS dZ/! I briefly
considered _cc, gg_ for /tS dZ/ but decided against
it since I wanted to preserve these spellings for
/k g/ in Latin loanwords. Thus I somewhat
grudgingly adopted _dg_ for those cases where
//dZ// was not followed by _e, i, y_.
[^3]: I have a somewhat conflicting rule whereby *every*
non-prevocalic /z/ became /j/ at one point, but I'm
not sold on it; at least it should perhaps not be
so pervasive!
[^4]: or perhaps rather _ghloriaus_, if not -/iouz/ > -
/iouj/ > -/i2y/ > -/i2/.
[^5]: It may turn into _li g�lisg_, though, considering
Proven�al _glieisa_ Friaulian /glezie/ and Italian
_chiesa_.
/BP 8^)>
--
bpj nosp@m atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient
� la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)