Of Haa/hhet & other matters (was: mu for [N])

On Friday, January 21, 2005, at 12:32 , Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> writes:
[snip]

>> Noooooo, you can't represent _Haa_/_hhet_ using a _`ay(i)n_-looking
>> symbol!!!  That's just *wrong*! :-P
Quite right!

>> I use |hh| myself, usually.
>> |x| could work, if it's not already taken for /x/.
>> If you're not adverse to using numbers, Arabic-speakers commonly use
>> |7| to transliterate it.
>> Other possible symbols:
>> |#| (looks like barred-H)
>> |q| it's back-of-the-mouth-y
>> |j| like Spanish /x/~/X/, just a little more back.
>
> So many suggestions! :-)
>
> First of all, I don't like using non-letter symbols for phonemes
> because I don't like the look of words with symbols.  They have no
> upper case (|µ| also doesn't,
But |µ| certainly does have an upper case. Look in ant Greek textbook - it'
s |M|    :)

But why do we need both upper and lower case forms? Mainly just
Greek-derived alphabets that seem to feel the need. Arabic, Hebrew, the
many Indian scripts, Burmese, Thai and others seem to get along happily
without separate upper & lower case.

> hmm...) and they seem to -- hmmm --
> destroy the look of words.  Very subjective thingy, of course.
Yes, indeed. I wonder if many centuries ago there were not some scribes
thinking the Norman |w| destroyed the look of words, and clung to the old
Saxon wynn    :)

[snip]
> Currently unoccupied letters:
>   labials: |b|, |p|, |m|, |f|, |v|, |w|
>   other:   |j|, |l|, |c|, |y|, |z|
The solution's obvious - |c| ha been used for practically everything else,
  so I don't think it will mind being a voiceless pharyngeal fricative
:)

Yes, I know the Somalis used it for the voiced pharyngeal fricative; but
if |c| can survive being pronounce {T] in Castile and [D] in Fiji, [tS] in
Italy and [dZ] in Turkey, I am sure it will survive being pronounced [?\].

> More problems: vowels & tones: since the language has tones, which I
> *must* (:-)) represent with diacritics in order to avoid symbols (and
> I don't like letters for tones either), I have problems due to the
> existence of a schwa: there is a nice unicode letter for it, but my
> browser fails to compose schwas with acute or grave accent.  So I
> used |e|.  However, uvulars and pharyngeals shift the articulation
> of /i/ to [e], and I want to represent this orthographically, too.
> *Sigh*
The Welsh have been using |y| for ages to represent /@/.
But I notice that while there are characters in Unicode for y-acute,
y-circumflex and y-diaeresis, there does not seem to be one for y-grave -
strange.

Ray
=======================================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
=======================================================
"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"

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