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Re: Orthography of palatalized consonants

From:James W <emindahken@...>
Date:Friday, January 14, 2005, 13:52
>>>> Steven Williams<feurieaux@...> 01/13/05 4:01 PM >>> > --- "James W." <emindahken@...> schrieb: >> Hi, >> >> Just getting back into conlanging after a bit of a >> break. I am reworking >> emindahken's orthography so it uses no digraphs. I >> have a series of >> palatalized consonants, and was thinking of using >> letter-plus-cedilla >> to represent them. Is this done in any natlang or >> standard >> transliteration >> scheme? If not, what is the common way to represent >> palatalization with >> one symbol? (Besides using the IPA symbol). >> >> The consonants in question >> t >> d >> s >> z >> l >> n > >Orthographically, Polish represents palatalized >consonants with /C + i/; to make up an example, since >I don't know any Polish, the word /piak/ would be >pronounced [p_jak]. I do the same thing in Gi-nàin, >and many transliteration schemes of Chinese do it as >well. If you want to disambiguate, like if your >language had a series of diphthongs with the first >element being [i] (for example, [i@], [iu], etc), then >you could concievably use /j/ or /y/, though that'd >look a bit ugly in my opinion. > >In cases where I _need_ to disambiguate in Gi-nàin, I >use dotless /i/ as a palatalization marker and dotted >/i/ as the full vowel marker.
I had been using /j/ as a marker, and wanted to get away from digraphs all together. Thus my question... :) OTOH, I like the dotless /i/ idea, since unlike /j/ it does not appear in any other context. I'll consider this... ==========================================
>>>> Isaac Penzev<isaacp@...> 01/13/05 4:26 PM >>> >James W. scripsit: >
[snip]
>> The consonants in question >> t >> d >> s >> z >> l >> n > >Hmm. A tough question to answer in two words. The problem is that although >there are languages with palatalized consonants that use Latin script, but >they do it in different ways, and I don't know a natlang that would have all >those 6 consonants at once.
Well, the language is supposed to be spoken by humans native to another planet. (Lots of conculture to work out still.....) So I won't be too concerned if there is no ANADEWism for this. :)
>Let us see. Cedilla is used in Latvian for this purpose, but it has only l : >ļ, n : ņ, k : ķ and g : ģ pairs (and I suspect they are not palatalized but >mere palatal).
Aha! I think my consonants in question are actually 'palatal' and not 'palatalized'. I'm slightly confused on the difference, although it makes hazy sense. Originally, the consonants were actually 'palatalized', I think, and after my revision yesterday, they have become 'palatal.' OK. I like the cedilla idea.
>Polish has many palatalized consonants, but it uses a silent "i" after them >if they stand before a vowel, so it uses digraphs in this case. Before >consonants only few of them are met, and those are s : ś, z : ź, dz : dź, c >: ć and n : ń (again they are rather palato-alveolar than palatalized). > >Czech has three palatalized consonants, they are marked with a haczek, that >is written as an apostrophe next to small t and d, as this n : ň, t : Ť/ť, d >: Ď/ď. Haczek is also used there to denote alveolar sibilants, e.g. s [s] : >š [S].
The potential problem with the haczek/apostrophe solution would be confusion with the apostrophe-as-glottal-stop that I already use.
>Feel free to use anything. From my personal taste, I would prefer plain good >old apostrophes after the character.
The aforementioned apostrophe problem... :)
> But I may be biased by phonetic >transcriptions of Russian and 12:25pm here now. > >-- Yitzik
I don't understand the time reference (perhaps you meant 12:25 AM?) Thanks, Steven and Yitzik! —--------- James W.

Replies

Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>Palatal vs. Palatalized (was Re: Orthography of palatalized consonants)
Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>