Re: Romanization of Reduced Vowels

At 12:15 pm +0100 9/12/98, Kristian Jensen wrote:
[....]
>
>Boreanesian, like its conlang predecessor Lumanesian, still has only
>four vowels: /a/ /i/ /u/ /@/. From what Raymond has posted, the
>vowel in Boreanesian's minor syllables would naturally have to be
>/@/, and that this vowel has several conditioned variants: voiced
>and voiceless [@],[I],[U], and zero. Raymond has also suggested that
>if this were the case, I should represent the vowel in the Roman
>orthography.
>
>But how should this be represented?
Welsh uses {y} for [@], so I kind of like that.

But if Boreanesian has only /a/ /i/ /u/ beside /@/ then I guess {e} is
probably the best. It's mostly has this sound, or something similar, in the
Chinese Pinyin system and is also used that way in Indonesian and there are
many examples from European langs where [@] is represented by {e}.  Indeed,
if the sound often reduces to zero, then the French use of {e} is a good
precedent.

[....]
>
>Like I said, its about time I go meditate now. Retreat to the other
>dimension where I can consult some more native Boreanesian speakers.
>8-) Thanks again to everyone. If there are anymore useful comments
>and suggestions, please feel free to disturb my meditation.
Happy meditations  :-)

Ray.