Re: Azurian phonology

Den 19. okt. 2008 kl. 11.53 skrev Benct Philip Jonsson:

> Agreed. I shouldn't think that the Danish-inspired
> Spelling used by the folklorist Svabo before the
> present Icelanicizing orthography was invented by
> Hammershaimb even used hC for preaspirated stops.
> It certainly used <p t c/k> and <b d g> for
> aspirated--unaspirated, since even Danish does
> that! Maybe Lars II has a con-historical explanation
> why Azurian is spelled amost in an IPA transcription?
The way I figure it is that there has been several spelling reforms
in order to make the spelling rules closer to the actual usage and
make it easier for Azurian children to learn how to spell, while at
the same time making old documents very difficult to read. The
Icelandic and Faroese spelling systems are much more historically
minded with a view to make it easier for modern people to read the
sagas, but learning them must be difficult as they are so far from
being phonetic. I have always disliked the quirkiness of the
Scandinavian spelling systems a lot, and admired the more phonetic
ones, like the Finnish for example. So when I sat over the Azurian
stuff, this was what came up. It may be right, or it may be wrong,
I'm not sure yet.

The rules concerning the stops may be from the reforms in the 19th
century or possibly from the later ones in the 1950s, when a lot of
extremists were in power, but the thing is that Azurian does need a
way to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops as well as
between aspirated and unaspirated unvoiced ones, because it has both
velar and dental voiced stops, though not bilabial ones. In most
cases these result from the old dental fricatives.

> And why it has such a Romance-soundunc name?
> Surely there is a different native name?
The Old Norse name for the whole island is Byntarland, but when part
of it  had been a Danish province for a while, it became fashionable
to call it Azuria. I'm not quite sure for what reason. But in my
historical overview I have published the following, which may be
close to the truth:
"After the shedding of 1469, it became customary to use the name
Azuria for the part that still remained in Danish possession. The
name was coined in 1482 by the mining overseer Morten Thomsen for the
blueness of the soils he often encountered, and gained popularity
until it was first used in an official document in 1525. Its
administrative centre was Lundeby, a new city founded upon the ruins
of Romoreiweza. However, its proximity to the new Scottish
possessions was unadvantageous from a military point of view, and
Christiansborg, today’s Borg, founded in 1480 as a fortress to
protect the new settlements in the northwest, was made residence in
1743."

> BTW it seems unrealistic that hey changed the
> spelling of /tS/ *from* <c> *into* <tj>;
> surely it should be the other way around:
> no West European before the 20th century
> would have dreamed of using c for a palatal-
> ized sound except before front vowels!
> And if /tS/ be <c> then surely /S/ be <ç>! ;-)
Well, the Urianians learnt to use the c from the Romans, and in the
2nd millennium the sound they used it for had developed into a
palatal fricative. So I thought it would be a good idea to borrow it
from them. There was no governing body proclaiming spelling rules
before the 1800s, so people just used what was available.

Anyway, these spelling ideas, too, are only tentative yet. I'll spend
some time the next days trying to see how they work in practice. If
they do not seem right, I will change them. Your opinions will have
weight, too. I thank you for them.

LEF