Re: Yûomaewec: English Spelling

Christophe Grandsire wrote, en réponse à myself:

> > If a stressed nucleus was followed by a consonant cluster or consonant
> > digraph, then under the old system you put a 'h' after the cluster.
> > This meant that stress was frequently marked inside the syllable
> > /after/ the one that was stressed! Also, if a stressed nucleus was
> > followed by a consonant and then the end of the word, you appended a
> > 'h' to the word instead of doubling the consonant.
> >
> > (e.g. the old "evolved" was "eovolvdh")
>
> Nice! Nice!! Nice!!! <jumps, bounces and rebounds in Tigger-like fashion
> ;))))>
>
> > I changed it mostly to make it easier for feeble English brains to add
> > affixes without shuffling 'h's around, but I had reservations about
> > doing so mostly because I don't like the look of double 'v' either at
> > the end of a word or before another consonant.
>
> Well, I don't find it that bad. Teonaht uses the doubling feature to
> indicate stress and it makes its words look quite neat :)) .
Some of my changes are connected to the shift from testing it by
writing out individual words and sentences, to testing it by writing
out larger blocks of text. With the former approach, I tend to notice
words that I don't like and try to fix them. With the latter approach,
the occasional word I don't like doesn't matter so much because it's
buried in the middle of a paragraph.

I also recently reversed the diacritics (e.g. "á" to "à") because I
actually prefer the former for typed stuff and the latter for
handwritten stuff ('cos it's not so easy to confuse with commas in
the line above).

> > I also rather liked the vaguely Gaelic feel created by all those
> > extra 'h's.
>
> It's true that your whole scheme has a vague Gaelic feel to it :)) .
> Niceness.
I am, to a degree, a fan of the Gaelic languages.

> > Generally speaking I don't like the look of languages that have lots
> > of double vowels everywhere like "aa", "ee", etc (e.g. Dutch). "O" was
> > the best choice for a lengthening vowel because it doesn't appear at
> > the end of many diphthongs, and besides, there are English precedents
> > e.g. "people".
>
> :((( I thought Maggel could have influenced in this case (LOL, Maggel
> influencing a spelling reform of English ;))))) ).
Nah, this project had its birth some time ago, long before I'd heard
of Maggel, probably long before Maggel existed.

> > I like |i| for /@/ because in my opinion a simple, neutral shape such
> > as a vertical stroke is a good shape for a schwa. Gzarondan also has
> > |i| for /@/, incidentally.
>
> I agree. I've always found using |a| (which normally marks the most open
> vowel there can be) for /@/ extremely strange, quite antinomic.
Well, in English, if you *insist* on using the same letter for schwa
as for some other vowel, then the best choice is to use the most open
of your short vowels. Most English-speakers find this the most
intuitive choice.

Since most reforms are continental-inspired, they use |a| for the most
open vowel and therefore also use |a| for /@/.

In my system, |a| and |e| (along with diacritics of the same) are the
front vowels, |u| and |i| (ditto) the central vowels, and |o| the
back vowels. Which is kind of neat, I think, and correllates
surprisingly well with a lot of English precedents.

> > I wanted something that never appears as two seperate consonants
> > (like "th" does in "pothole"), and then it was a straightforward step
> > to the idea that a digraph with a fricative should *still* be a
> > fricative and a digraph with a nasal should *still* be a nasal.
>
> True enough.
Gzarondan has the same - {hs} and {hz} - but it doesn't have /N/ and
couldn't use {yn} anyway since {y} can be used as a vowel in Gzarondan.

> > > "Implicit consonant"?
> >
> > The implicit [j] in the above examples, for example. Light consonants
> > that are normally not marked.
>
> You mean you pronounce "chaos" as [k_hEIjOs]?
It's very, very light - but it's there, or at least hinted at.

> > That, as I said, is an exaggeration (oh wait, you included the word
> > "can") but I am glad you like it :-)
>
> Thanks! And as I said, I didn't say that your system was Maggelish (too
> regular for that), but it had a strong Maggelish potential :)) . Add a
> few silent letters, strange conventions, and some irregularities and
> you have a good Maggelish candidate :)) .
I intend to keep it fairly regular, but for example I am by no means
closed to the notion of using {au} for vowels that some people
pronounce /6:/ {uo} and others pronounce /{:/ {ao}. Also the odd
silent 'h' wouldn't be too bad as a remnant of the old stress system.

Adrian.

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