Re: Romanization of Reduced Vowels

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>>
>> I'm wondering how you guys deal with reduced vowels in
>> Romanized orthography. I'm not sure how to present them or if I
>> should present them at all.
>
>Depends, are they phonemic?  In W., for instance, [@] is an
>allophone of /a/, so it's simply written <a>.
>
Well, I was thinking along the lines of the epenthetic vowel that
occurs between conjuncts in words of the Mon-Khmer type. That is, a
major syllable is preceded by numerous minor syllables. Some of
these minor syllable coallesce to form consonant clusters. For
example:

-> /s.r@j/ "female" - /s/ and /r/ would be separated by a voiceless
[@].

-> /m.daj/ "mother" - /m/ and /d/ would be separated by a voiced
[@].

-> /p.ram/ "five" - /p/ and /r/ forms a cluster without an
epenthetic vowel.

-> /m.w@y/ "one" - m and w is separated by a very short [U] if at
all.

-> /m.j@n/ "to have" - m and j is separated by a very short [I] if
at all.

As one can see vowel in minor syllables has several phonetic values
depending on the environment: voiced and voiceless [@], zero, [U],
or [I]. Should this vowel be represented in Roman orthography? If
so, should it be presented by one symbol or several symbols to
reflect the pronounciation? If not, how do I avoid ambiguity with
syllable final clusters?

Regards,
-Kristian- 8-)