Re: Non-Russian Cyrillics (was: I'm back)

Sorry for late answer -- real hectic IRL.

li_sasxsek@nutter.net skrev:
> li [Isaac Penzev] mi tulis
>
>> ... | distinguish /ji/ from /i/ and /jM/ from /M/, and I thought |
>> to use І /i/ И /ji/ Ъ /M/ Ь /jM/ (while Ы would seem out of | place
>> for /M/ where І was /i/) but I was told those | assignments would
>> seem weird to a Russophone.
>>
>> Indeed they are. Cyrillic alphabet has its own story and tradition
>> of adaptation to non-Russian langs, but in general it is less
>> flexible to non-standard appication of graphemes than Latin, IMHO.
>> ...
Yes, so it seems, yet the value of И varies rather widely in that its
Russian and Ukrainian values are practically opposite.

>
>> | Well well | there are always the possibility of using Ӥ Ӹ for the
>>  | preceding /j/.
>>
>> Surely there are, though in practice those characters mean: Ӥ -
>> non-palatalizing /i/ in Udmurt; Ӹ - palatalizing /M/ in Mari [info
>> needs verification].
That's a bit less of a problem with my Neo-Tocharian, as (1) it would be
an Ill Bethisad language and (2) the Cyrillic orthography would have
been devised already in the 19th century and (3) the Russian spelling
reform of 1918 probably never happened *there*, and (4) Soviet language
policies surely never happened *there*, so any difference between
Ӥ Ӹ and И Ы will be dependent on the difference between І and Ї in
Church Slavic, which I suppose will be the same as in Ukrainian and
Rusyn, i.e. І /i/ and Ї /ji/.

BTW, Yitzik, does Ї always stand after a vowel in Ukrainian and
Rusyn?

I see that Rusyn has a three-way distinction І /i/, И /I/ and Ы /i\/;
and thus it may not be totally over the top to assign the values
І /i/, И /jM/, Ы /M/ in Neo-Tocharian -- the general principle
being that И is 'intermediate' between І and Ы?  I think that a
distinction /i/<>/ji/ after consonants might not maintain itself.

> How about <Ӥ> /i/ as distinct from <И> /ji/ ?   And maybe <Ӱ> for
> /ɯ/?  Or maybe use the soft sign <Ь> for /j/?  Then there's the use
> of <Ј> for /j/ as in Serbian.
In the light of what Yitzik said I don't think so -- especially not
in the 19th century, and if the orthography were devised by a monk
versed in Church Slavic; he may adopt ІИЫ for sounds in the [i]..[M]
range, and *maybe* devise Ӥ /jI/ and Ӹ /jM/ based on the analogy of Ї.
He *may* also adopt Ъ for /@/ or /V/ and just *maybe* then apply
Ь to the same sound after palatalized consonants, and then an even
stronger *maybe* he would use the Combining Cyrillic Palatalization
diacritic for palatalized consonants before other consonants or word
finally.  How aware would a 19th century Russian monk be of the jers
as actual vowels in Church Slavic?  After all the orthography may
make do with not distinguishing zero and /@/ after palatalized
consonants.  The older orthography based on Classical Tocharian
would be even less well adapted to Neo-Tocharian (think Tibetan!)

The risk/chance of a 19th century Russian monk adopting J is probably
very slight.  After all Vuk Karadžić was a radical of sorts; my yet
unnamed monk wouldn't be.

> If you don't mind venturing a bit from existing encodings, maybe you
> could come up with some new characters that are based on existing
> Cyrillic letters.
Well, I am for practical reasons rather stuck with what Unicode offers.

BTW Yitzik, do you know the values of Ԁ KOMI DE  and Ԃ KOMI DJE
(U+0501  and U+0503) and how they relate to Д?

They will probably not do anyway for  the t/T and d/D distinctions
I'll try for Neo-Tocharian.  Fita is probably a possible choice for
/T/; I'm thinking of Ѕ for /D/, but am wholly unsure how appropriate
it may be perhaps З С for /D/ /T/ against ЗЬ СЬ or З҄ С҄ for /z/ /s/
and ЖЬ ШЬ or Ж҄ Ш҄ for /z\/ /s\/ as the merged reflexes of */z;/Z;/ and
*/s;/S;/ of my putative Middle Tocharian.  (For those who wonder
Neo-Toch voiced obstruents come from Tocharian B nasals + obstruents.)