Re: aspirated m?

Quoting Kris Kowal <cowbertvonmoo@...>:

> --- Steven Williams:
> > --- Ray Brown eskribiw:
> > --- Isaac Penzev skrev:
> > > AFAIK, voiceless nasals are separate phonemes in
> > > Burmese (Myanmar).
> > And several Native American languages, not to mention
> > at least one of Tolkien's conlangs (if that counts).
>
> Huh?  Either you know something about Telerin or Ilkorin that I don't,
> but I don't believe that any of Tolkien's conlangs have voicles
> nasals.  I only really know for sure in Quenya and Sindarin.  However,
> there are tenwa that could concievably be used for the purpose.  If
> you follow the 'idea' behind the tengwar and where the number of bows
> represents whether the phoneme is voiced, row 6 (ore, vala, anna, and
> wilya, i think) could concievely be voiceless nh, mh, ngh, and ngwh.
FWIW, in the Etymologies, there is one revision layer that changes Noldorin
m->sm- to hm-, apparently denoting a voiceless m. This was later undone - in
the Sindarin of LotR, we wind for example _mallorn_, despite that the first
element seems to derive from SMAL.

                                                         Andreas

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