Re: Senyecan Orth. & Phon .

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@Y...> wrote:
> The Senyecan language has 30 phonemes: 24 consonants & 6 vowels.  The
> consonants are arranged on a grid of 3 columns & 4 rows.  The 3
> columns are plosives, fricatives, and sonorants.  The 4 rows are
> bilabials, dentals, alveolars, and palatals.
I wondered whether I would even hear the difference
between a dental and alveolar stop consistently...  but
you wisely chose to use an affricate in the place of the
alveolar stop.  =)  Quite an elegant system, although I
don't share your dislike of velars.



> This gives 12 pairs
> when voicing is considered.  The pairs are (and this is the Senyecan
> alphabetical order): p/b, f/v, mh/m; t/d, th/dh, lh/l; ç/ß,
> s/z, r/n;
> and c/g, ch/gh, yh/y.  These are not the graphemes I had originally
> decided would best serve (I have an aversion to digraphs), but I had
> to modify them for the conlang group.  I chose estset since the
> Germans aren't using it any more :-)
Hehe, a noble cause...  but ç/ß are very confusing choices
for an affricate.  If you want to use ß in its natural
habitat, why not write /s z/ as |ß s| (as in German), use
|z| for /t_s/ instead (also as in German) and then maybe
assign |x| to /d_z/ (as in Albanian)?  I'm not sure
whether that would suit your taste, though.  =P

Pairing up r with n is really cool.



> There is also an epenthetic schwa (@) used to avoid unacceptable
> consonant clusters.  It is never written in the original orthography,
> but I always include it when transliterating to the Latin alphabet.
> In the conlang group I will use ü.
OK... expect most people to read it as /y/ though.  ;-)

BTW, what's wrong with not writing epenthetic schwas?
You're under no obligation to present your language in
a phonetic spelling.  In fact, many of us like obscure
orthographies.  ;o)



-- Christian Thalmann