Re: Romanization of Reduced Vowels

Steg wrote :

On Thu, 10 Dec 1998 01:49:35 +0100 Kristian Jensen
> writes:
>
> >>I would suggest *o* when major is *u*, *e* when major is *i*, *a*
> >>when major is *a*, and nothing when mute because I believe you
> >>will end up pronouncing them like that.
>
> >But there is only _one_ underlying minor vowel in Boreanesian - the
> >/@/. The other realizations of this vowel ([I],[U], and zero) are
> >allophones of the same vowel. That's why I have decided to symbolize
> >this with the same letter all throughout. Yet, it still wouldn't
> >cause any ambiguity to represent these allophones by different
> >letters to better reflect the pronounciation. Its just that Raymond
> >adviced using one letter. What's better, phonemic or phonetic
> >transcription?
>
> >Regards,
> >-Kristian- 8-)
>
> I think that in this case phonemic is better....how about using the same
> vowel, but for specification/teaching(?) purposes, give each phonetic
> value of the letter a different diacritic, for example:
>
> (my special-characters don't always show up correctly, so i'm giving a
> description too)
>
> [@] = {h, E-falling-accent}
> [I] = {j, E-circumflex}
> [U] = {i, E-rising-accent}
> [ ] = {e, normal-E}
>
>
I like that. It's very much like French figure out how their imaginary pure *e* works.

Mathias


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