Re: Optimum number of symbols

On 19 May 02, at 14:08, Kendra wrote:

> > Uatakassi uses a slightly modified syllabry.  What I mean by slightly
> > modified is that there are characters for V, CV and CLV, as well as for
> > L by itself (due to historical reasons; there's no special phonetic
> > quality of that l), plus diacritics for the codas -s, -z, -f, -v, -n,
> > and gemination.
>
> The idea of diacritics for something other than vowels interests me! I
> probably never would have thought of that on my own. Do any ('natural')
> systems use something like that?
Sounds a little like the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, used
for languages such as Cree and Inuit(?). They generally have CVC
syllables and use CV syllable characters [a basic character indicating
the consonant which is rotated and/or reflected to indicate the vowel]
with a smaller diacritic marking the final consonant if the syllable is
CVC.

In some variants, the final -C character looks like a basic character
(usually Ca, I believe), while in others, the set of final diacritics
is completely separate.

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