Re: Graeca sine flexione

Hi!

Philip Newton writes:
> On 5/4/07, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> >
> > Philip Newton writes:
> > >...
> > > Though the sound in "vjo" and "jo" is the same, [j\], I'm not sure
> > > whether I'd like to use soft sign for the second case, since it's more
> > > of a consonant post-modifier to me than a stand-alone consonant.
> >
> > Ok, yes, it definitely is a postmodifier in Russian.  In Bulgarian,
> > however, the hard sign is a regular vowel (but not the soft sign).
> > According to my dictionary, there are even some words beginning with a
> > hard sign.
>
> Do you have any suggestions for a Latin equivalent, for
> forced-palatalisation contexts there? I'd like to keep the isomorphism
> between the two orthographies, as much as possible.
Hm, with all your constraints, it's hard.  To keep the separation, I'd
probably go for a good old apostrophe (or something typographically
optimal that essentially looks like an apostrophe), although I don't
like that much visually as non-letters look kind of misplaced to me
for representing sounds.  It is surely a bias from the languages I am
used to.

I think if isomorphism had highest priority, I would rather sacrifice
separate palatalisation signs in Greek than use an apostrophy in
Latin.

And just like the apostrophe, you seem to have considered all the
characters I can think of now.

>...
> - U+012C/D LATIN LETTER I WITH BREVE (matches the etymological origin
> of the sound)
>...
Looks ok, too.  Maybe it is kind of marked and might imply stronger
articulation than intended.  Dunno.

> - U+0134/5 LATIN LETTER J WITH CIRCUMFLEX (as a modified |j|)
Less ok than I BREVE to me -- I think it looks like marking more
friction than |j|.

> - U+00B8 CEDILLA (spacing mark; not a letter, though, and not cased)
I don't like this one too much.

> - U+002C COMMA
Neither this one.

> Any suggestions/recommendations?
>
> i-breve just came to mind just now, while writing this and looking
> through Unicode code charts, but maybe that one's the best.
>...
Yeah, why not.

> Or maybe I should just go with using the Cyrillic sign anyway, even
> in Latin.
>
> Or using |j| for forced palatalisation and a different character for
> stand-alone [j\], e.g. j-circumflex.
This also sounds good.

> (Incidentally, I'm toying with the idea of discarding Latin j from the
> Greek orthography and using Cyrillic ј instead. Ideally, I'd even
> substitute c-cedilla with something else non-Latin, but I'm not sure
> what to use.
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 digraph 'hj' is quite intuitive, I think, but is a digraph.
(I used 'xj' in Fukhian IIRC.)

> Possibly chuck the cedilla entirely and then use Latin
> |c| in Latin and Cyrillic |с| in Greek. Hmm, decisions, decisions.)
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... :-)

**Henrik

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