Re: Graeca sine flexione

On 5/6/07, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> Ah, the problem of representing /C/ -- I think I also encountered that
> one. :-)  I think I never found the perfect letter.  What do natlangs
> use?
The only languages I know that have [C] are German, which uses "ch"
after front vowels, and Greek, which uses "χ" before front vowels.

(Interesting that in German, it's the vowel *before* the |ch| which
decides whether it's [C] or [X], while in Greek, it's the vowel
*after* the |χ| which decides whether it's [C] or [x]. Compare German
"lachen" with [X] and archaicising Greek έλαχεν "he met by chance"
with [C] in the same environment.)

> > Possibly chuck the cedilla entirely and then use Latin
> > |c| in Latin and Cyrillic |с| in Greek. Hmm, decisions, decisions.)
FWIW, I decided to go that route. So Greek now has Cyrillic j and c.

Today, I got my next problem :) I decided to recognise diphthongs, but
wanted to show whether two vowels were separate or not.

I didn't want to use |j| (e.g. as |aj| for [aj]), since that stands
for [j\], not [j] -- and I didn't want to make diphthongs the default,
either, since I envisioned lots of diaereses in that case. Latin would
have given me i-breve and u-breve, which was tempting -- but font
support for iota-breve and upsilon-breve in Greek is not that great.
So I'm tentatively going with diaeresis now, even though that sign
usually has the exact opposite meaning (i.e. *no* diphthong)!

Plus I'm using i-breve for forced palatalisation in Latin already.
(Not the best, but since the orthography I use more is the Greek-based
one, that doesn't matter so much. I really like the Cyrillic soft sign
there that you suggested -- and added a little inside joke about its
name: officially "iperoio simio" = palatal sign, but colloquially,
"mĭahķi znak", a phrase "of unknown origin and meaning" :D.)

I also think I'm going to embrace the origin of GSF in Modern, rather
than Ancient, Greek, and replace some of the AG words I put in with MG
ones, since they're really only a token attempt to make it more
AG-like, and also to use a bit more palatalisation, MG-like.

> You really seem to have considered many good alternatives.  I'm as
> torn as you are.  This is a typical stage of conlanging I find myself
> in often... :-)
Glad to know I'm not the only one!

This is a first time for me.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>