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Re: aspirated m?

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 24, 2004, 19:11
Ray Brown scripsit:

> >I only really know for sure in Quenya and Sindarin. However, > >there are tenwa that could concievably be used for the purpose. > > Yes, yes - in any schematic system like tenwa there is likely to the > possibility of signs for sounds that do not occur or even could not occur > because they are physically impossible.
In Appendix E of the L.R., JRRT writes: # According to the principle observed above, Grade 6 [of the tengwar] # should then have represented the voiceless nasals; but since such sounds # (exemplified by Welsh _nh_ or ancient English _hn_) were of very rare # occurrence in the languages concerned, Grade 6 (21-24) was most often # used for the weakest or 'semi-vocalic' consonants of each series. Now JRRT certainly knew his Welsh, so I would conclude that he is using the term "voiceless nasal" loosely. But "very rare occurrence" surely cannot mean "no occurrence at all", so I think we can also conclude that aspirated and/or voiceless nasals *do* occur in the Tolklangs, though perhaps not phonemically. Certainly the Eldar seemed to have thought of hr- hl- as biphonemic, and probably hm- hn- hN- would have been treated likewise. -- Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter, Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme): jcowan@reutershealth.com One sentence (two stanzas) / Hexasyllabically http://www.reutershealth.com Challenges poets who / Don't have the time. --robison who's at texas dot net

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>