Re: Consonant allophones in Minza

Hello from the same hemisphere as most readers, for a change!

Philip Newton wrote:
> On 9/28/07, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>> In a conlang sketch, I once used
>>
>>     |a e i o u| for /a e i o u/ (/a/ as more like [A]),
>> and |ä ë ï ö ü| for /& V M 2 y/.
>>
>> Maybe it would be an option for you?  This way, you have the diaeresis
>> as a 'swap front-back' diacritic and still retain the standard values
>> for the unmarked vowels.  Furthermore, only |ë| and |ï| are lightly
>> off-standard.
>
> And since /M/ is the value of Turkish dotless-i (AFAIK), you could
> think of the second dot in |ï| "cancelling out" the first one,
> resulting in a dotless-i, for which /M/ is an accepted pronunciation.
> IYSWIM.
 From what I've seen, Turkic linguists often use ï for the (phonemic)
high back vowel. I can't remember if any language has three back
unrounded vowels, and if so whether the middle one is marked by ë.

As for Minza's orthography, I myself am partial to digraphs and,
considering the allophony of preceding consonants, a system like

       ia ie i  io iu for /& e i 2 y/
   and ua ue ui uo u  for /a V M o u/

strikes my fancy. /g/ vs /G~j\/ might be spelt using an e/o afterwards
instead, so "gia" = [g&] but "gea" = [j\&]; "gua" = [ga] but "goa" = [Ga].

But I admit this orthography probably wouldn't work so well if there's
lots of polysyllables and/or hiatus. You'd get more vowels than you can
poke a stick at.

--
Tristan.

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