Re: EAK Romanization et alia

On 5/17/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Philip Newton wrote:
> > I'd recommend ê and ô (e-circumflex and o-circumflex), respectively.
> > Both have some currency as Latin equivalents of eta and omicron,
>
> They do - but I find it a bit confusing as ancient & Koine Greek had a
> circumflex accent.
Hm, well, but since this is not an official romanisation, nor the
primary script for the language, nor is EAK = Ancient or Koine Greek,
I'm not sure whether this is really a deal-breaker.

> > and
> > since you only have one written accent, you don't need Latin
> > circumflex to represent Greek circumflex (perispômenê).
>
> Yes - BUT how does one put an acute on a circumflexed-e or
> circumflexed-o? Really we need a system that allows an acute to be put
> on the symbol.
This, on the other hand, is a better point IMO.

You could go the Vietnamese way, which does have both e and o with
circumflex and acute. However, those letters are IMO unlikely to
display on the systems of people who can't also display Greek letters
in the first place.

> I could use the following system:
>         UNSTRESSED      STRESSED
> HIGH      è             ê
> LOW       e             é
That's a possibility.

> > _eh_ and _oh_ seem strange -- especially the first, since I
> > interpret _eh_ as /E/.
>
> Not to anglophones where _eh!_ is pronounced to rhyme with _say!_    :)
Ah, yes, as a standalone word.

But in fauxnetics, _eh_ seems moderately common when transcribing /E/,
e.g. BEHD for English |bed|. Or so I think; I may be imagining things
here.

> >> 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.)
>
> Presumably, however, you (and modern Greeks) will have exactly the same
> problem if you read ancient Greek.
Not quite, since you'd have aútê rather than autê' in this case, so
the false friend is not quite as close.

But in principle, yes, you're right.

> As EAK is strictly based on the
> ancient language with a cut off in the Koine of the 1st cent CE, the
> modern Greek usage is not relevant.
*nods*

I was only talking about myself; not to influence your design.

> I think your & my observations here show up one the reasons that the
> "Graeca sine flexione" of February 2006 got nowhere in the end:
> combining ancient & modern Greek in a mishmash is simply going to throw
> up inconsistencies and ambiguities. This, I think, is why the approaches
> you & I are taking are my likely to succeed.
*nods*

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