Re: Consonant allophones in Minza

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> I'd rather expect a nasal which is platal next to front
> vowels and velar next to back vowels, like the voiced
> fricative. In fact I'd expect all velars to behave the same,
> as in modern Greek.
Since all the other velars in Minza have palatal allophones, I agree
that makes sense. Maybe the /ň/ should alternate as [n`] vs. [n_j],
contrasting with /ŋ/ as [N] vs. [J]. I think there's enough difference
between [nʲ] and [ɲ], and [nʲ] makes a better set with [ʃ] and [ʒ].

>  > The other thing is a writing issue: how to spell a sound
>  > that alternates between [G] and [j\], similar to what
>  > happens in Modern Greek.
>
> Clearly YOGH Ȝ ȝ \u021C \u021D which was similarly used in
> Middle English -- the name of the letter itself was ȝoȝ.
> The drawback is that it has bad font coverage, but you can
> always use EZH Ʒ ʒ \u01B7 \u0292 as a stopgap, even though
> it doesn't look right, to confound the two is a Bad Thing
> and its font coverage is only marginally better -- it is
> covered by Tahoma at least. At a pinch one may even use
> Cyrillic ZE З з \u0417 \u0437, whose font coverage is much
> better, as a stopgap.
Well, ȝoȝ is a possibility, and "ȝy" at least looks better than "γy". I
could always assume that anyone with an interest in conlangs can figure
out where to get a font with yogh in it.

> I'd be most inclined to use
>
> :  Front: i e ä ö ü
> :  Back:  y ė a o u
>
> Ė ė \u0116 \u0117 actually has good font coverage, but I'd
> certaily use ë for a vowel in the @-7-V range to make
I believe ė is used in Lithuanian, so that makes sense that lots of
fonts support it. Or is it Latvian? I used ė for /e/ (as distinct from
/E/) in an older version of Minza. There's also the two different schwa
characters (Ə ə and Ǝ ǝ), but Ə ə is actually /æ/ in Azerbaijani, and Ǝ
ǝ is less well supported in fonts.

>  > But if I use "y" for the high central vowel, "γy" (with
>  > gamma for /G/) is an awkward-looking combination.
>
> I agree with that. I'm even bothered by gj in Scandinavian
> orthographies and jy (not to mention jyy) in Finnish, so in
> this case I'd come down tout americaniste and use
>
> :  Front: i e ä ö ü
> :  Back:  ï ë a o u
>
> In which case I might even use y for [G]/[j\]. It is both in
> use for [j] and looks vaguely like a gamma! In fact the
> Swedish Dialect Alphabet uses gamma for a back velar
> fricative, Roman y for a front velar fricative and script y
> for [y], so I'm kinda used to something similar! :-)
Hmm, but then I'd have diphthongs "ïë" and "ëï" (unless I go the
dotless-i route with "ıë", "ëı"). And I've pretty much decided against
/ö/ and /ü/ being Minza phonemes, although they may come up in borrowed
names. It's tempting, though, to get back to an entirely Latin-alphabet
writing system. My current stopgap symbol for the palatal/velar
fricative is "ħ", which isn't any more satisfactory than anything else
I've tried.

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