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Re: Consonant allophones in Minza

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 3, 2007, 2:27
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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Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>