Re: Dictionaries and modified Latin sort orders

James Campbell wrote:
> I have a similar problem
Uatakassí uses a syllabry.  I don't know *how* I'd get their order.
There's actually two orders, but the simpler one is based on a table of
the characters (analogous to the Japanese a i u e o order, as opposed to
the i ro ha order).  Syllables are arranged first by vowels (in the
order i, a, u, li, la, lu) then by consonant (in the order l, d, n, f,
k, t, p, s, -, z, b, m, g, v, (w)), then by diacritics (in the order -z,
-s, -v, -n, -f, *, LV).  Also, the character for solitary L goes after
the U series; the - in the consonant series indicates no consonant, that
is, the vowels alone.  The * in the diacritics indicates gemination of
the *following* consonant, thus KA*-Ta would be Katta, and LV indicates
long vowel.  So, the order of the characters would be li di ni fi ... gi
vi la da na ... ga va wa lu du ... gu vu l dli nli ... etc. ending with
vlu.  Wa indicates a special character used only for the gender 6
marker, ua-.  Originally, there were characters for Wi, Wa, and Ya, but
when /h/ and /q/ were lost, creating new instances of /w/ and /j/, these
characters were simply replaced by the sequences of U/I plus vowel,
since that's where almost all glides came from.  Wa was preserved for
the gender 6 marker, in formal writing.  Even there, many people simply
write UA.

The orders of the descendant langs would be even more complicated, since
consonant-l sequences often became new sounds.  For example, zl -> r.
So, the order of the vowels would end up being i a u i a u, just certain
consonants would fall in the second half and others in the first half!
More complicated is that kl and gl become t and d.  Kla, klu, gla, and
glu fell out of use, but kli and gli remained to indicate /ti/ and /di/,
which didn't exist before that sound change.  So, most of the /t/
syllables would be in the first half, and but /ti/ would be in the
second half.  Most of the CL characters were simply lost, since most
often the change was simply a simplification, bl -> b, for instance.

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