Re: EAK Romanization et alia

On 5/16/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> I have been thinking whether I
> should give Roman script versions of Greek and EAK words for those who
> still cannot read Greek characters. The scenario of the "Western
> Hellenic Alternative Timeline" does, of course, mean there would be _no_
> Roman alphabet, and the Greek alphabet would now have spread around
> various parts of our globe, where now the Roman alphabet is used.
*nods*

> - Y will be uniformly transcribed as _u_ (and not, sometimes as _y_). We
> are used to French where |u| = /y/ and |ou| = /u/; so there is no reason
> why we cannot use |u| and |ou| in exactly the same way in a "Romanized EAK".
Ah, makes sense.

> As for the aspirates - phi, theta and khi - they were traditionally
> rendered _ph, th and ch_. These will probably be fricatives in EAK, so
> we could use _f_  for phi, and _x_ for khi. But what do we do about
> _theta_ - obviously using the Greek symbol defeats the object using
> Roman script for those who cannot read the Greek characters! Would þ
> (thorn) present similar problems?
I would imagine not. At least, unless people are trapped in a
restrictive ASCII-only world, in which case they wouldn't even see
accented vowels.

Although, come to think of it, I thought I had read that some people
had difficulty reading Old English on some systems. I think this was
because the Mac Roman charset lacks edh. ... apparently, it has no
thorn, either.

However, I'm not sure whether this is still a problem with Mac OS X,
nor how many people would be likely to use Mac OS <= 9.

> Could I use _8_ because of its resemblance to the Greek theta?
That's one convention in Greeklish. It does, of course, have the
disadvantage that it's caseless.

> But what about eta (= /e/ in EAK, as opposed to epsilon = /E/) and omega
> (= /o/ in EAK, as opposed to omicron = /0/)? I could use _w_ for omega,
> which is normal in "ASCII Greek" and _w_ is used a vowel symbol in
> Welsh. But while we might stomach |w| = /u/, what about |w| = /o/? In
> any case, it still does not solve the problem of eta. I could use _e_
> and _o_ with dots beneath, but that probably will cause problems to
> those who can't read the Greek characters; below I will use _eh_ and
> _oh_ for eta & omega.
I'd recommend ê and ô (e-circumflex and o-circumflex), respectively.
Both have some currency as Latin equivalents of eta and omicron, and
since you only have one written accent, you don't need Latin
circumflex to represent Greek circumflex (perispômenê).

Also, ô is familiar from French for /o/, and I wouldn't be surprised
if there were a language using ê to represent /e/ as distinct from
/E/. _eh_ and _oh_ seem strange -- especially the first, since I
interpret _eh_ as /E/.

> [PERSONAL PRONOUNS - 1st & 2nd]
> I am a little surprised to have had no comments on these from either of
> the two Philips, so I assume my use of  -λαό (-laó) "people" to form the
> plurals is not as outrageous I feared it might seem    :)
I *was* rather taken aback by the suggestion, but decided it wasn't
too outrageous after all.

> Word order will be in ancient Greek, Koine and AFAIK modern Greek, i.e.
> article-adjective-noun, e.g. to sofo andro = the wise man.
That is, indeed, how modern Greek still does it.

> I propose that EAK do the same, e.g.
> to auto gunaiko _or_ to gunaiko to auto = the same woman
> BUT
> auto to gunaiko _or_ to gunaiko auto = the woman herself
Ah! This will take some getting used to, as the second usage means
"this woman" in modern Greek. (And both forms are possible, i.e. with
pronoun before or after the article+noun complex.)

("The same woman" uses "idios": "hê idia gunaika" / "i idia yineka",
as does "the woman herself": "hê idia hê gunaika" / "i idia i
yineka".)

> I also propose that _auto_ can be used as a pronoun to mean _him, her,
> it, them_.
> At present my feeling is that when used as a _subject_ pronoun it should
> carry emphasis, i.e. he himself etc.
>
> Comments?
I don't feel familiar enough with Ancient Greek to comment on that.

From a Modern Greek perspective, of course, using _auto_ as a pronoun
to mean "he, she, it, them" is just fine (and it's the "herself/same"
meanings that are a bit odd).

> PS - how do the two Philips (and other Hellenists) re-act to the
> Romanized spellings in the examples. It's not too Glosa like, is it?   :)
I don't know Glosa.

It looks fine to me, on the whole -- rather natural. The "worst" is
|u| for upsilon, but even that shouldn't take too much getting used
to.

Though you should realise that I'll persist in reading EAK with modern
Greek phonology :) For example, _auto_ = /af'to/.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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