Re: Roman Syllabary
| From: | Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, May 18, 2001, 18:14 |
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At 11:47 pm -0400 17/5/01, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>It's a freaky,
Hey, are you saying that Fushiki Okamoto & I are both freaks?
But then, I guess, conlangers are pretty freaky anyway. ;)
>and rather unpractical, idea, but at least a worthwhile
>intellectual challenge; so I'll have a go at it...
I know the feeling - I could never resist an intellectual challenge.
>What I'm talking about is not designing a syllabary convention fit for the
>rendering of any existing language - since that would be all but suicidal -
Yep - you'd need a language with simple syllabic structure (quite a few of
those about) and a restricted phonology since the inventory of symbols is
small. The Romans bequeathed us only 23 letters; the modern English
version has only added three more. We could extend it further by adding
things like c-cedilla, s-sedilla, o-with-slash etc. But even so that'd
get us about 30 at the most, I think. That would not be enough even for
the Polynesian languages which come closest to fitting the bill, so to
speak.
>but rather the construction of a phonology and a Roman-based syllabary that
>would neatly fit each other.
Like I tried to do in the late 1950s & early 1960s :)
>An earlier analysis of Babm revealed various flaws; too many needless
>distinctions, and too much arbitrariness.
That's certainly how it seems to me - no one else seems to have spotted a
coherent system.
>The phonology of the Babm
>syllabary is too obviously made to fit to the arbitrary quirks of the Roman
>alphabet and its traditional values.
{j} = [zI] and {x} = [ki] doesn't seem to me to meet even that criterion.
>I think that such a small syllabary could only realistically work for a
>very basic phonology; so quite minimal distinctions.
I agree.
>Here goes:
>
>Vowels and diphthongs: /a i u/, /ai au/
>
>Consonants: /p t k l m n s h w j/
>
>a /a/ l /la/ w /wa/
>b /pu/ m /mu/ x /hi/
>c /si/ n /na/ y /ju/
>d /tu/ o /au/ z /su/
>e /ai/ p /pa/
>f /hu/ q /ku/
>g /ki/ or /ti/ r /li/
>h /ha/ s /sa/
>i /i/ t /ta/
>j /ja/ u /u/
>k /ka/ v /wi/
>
>The thing with {g} there is that /ki/ and /ti/ would not be distinctive -
>both surface as [tSi], so the differentiation is suppressed in the fronted
>environment.
I'd suggest rather {c} = /ki/ or /ti/ = [tSi], [ts\i]; and having {x} =
/hi/ or /si/ = [Si], [s\i]
The now redundant {g} can be found a job as /Ji/ (suggested by the Italian
_gni_ in _gnocchi_ :)
None of my systems, as far as I remember, contained diphthongs.
[snip]
>and /u/ is rounded. I assign /u/ to /m/, by the same logic, and to make it
>more characteristic (quite redundant, I know).
In my early attempts I tried to get symbols for /mi/, /ma/, /mu/ and /ni/,
/na/, /nu/ - and that was always a problem :)
But a more recent attempt of mine just had:
{g} = /Ji/
{n} = /na/
{m} = /mu/
[snip]
>
>Babm overly favored the velar phonemes, as we have concluded,
Yes, and I'm darned if I can see why FO did so.
>and this I
>address by making {c x} serve other plausible roles, as fricatives (where
>{x} would be a surface [C] due to palatalization).
> To avoid introducing a
>labial fricative phoneme, {f} is /hu/, to be pronounced as [Pu] (similar to
>Japanese) or possibly even [fu].
Yep - I'd go along with that.
>
>As to how well this would work out as the phonology of an actual language,
>I can't say; it's very restrictive.
It is indeed, but FO constructed a language with a similarly restricted
phonology. How much success he had in getting people to take up his
language, I don't know.
Has anyone come across anybody actually using Babm? It's been around since
1962. There is AFAIK no Babm home-page on the net, which suggests that it
has gone the way of the hundreds of other conIALs published over the past
three centuries or so.
>Perhaps introduce some tonemes - to be
>orthographized by punctuation marks; although that might be considered a
>breach of the syllabaric system, I guess.
I don't see why. The Japanese katakana is considered to be a syllabary,
even tho it uses two diacritics.
>But still:
>
>" high level tone
>' high rising tone
>. low level tone
>, low rising tone
>
>e'p,m"l"q. = [ ai pa mu la ku]
> high-rise low-rise high high low
>
>Something like that.
>
>(Don't ask me how I propose to replace actual punctuation! :p Conscript
>other less needed symbols, such as #&/=+, possibly?)
Possibly.
Ray.
=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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