Re: Schwa vowel, which letter?

On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, John Cowan wrote:

> charles wrote:
>
> > I think I need to add the schwa vowel to the standard 5
> > in my projected conlang. Which letter (grapheme?) would be
> > best to use for it? I've considered X, Y (Lojban),
> > or using W for /u/ and U for schwa, or "-", and worse ...
>
> Not surprisingly, I favor "y".  Schwa is also one of the two
> sounds of "y" in Welsh, and a sound similar to schwa in Russian
> is conventionally transliterated "y".
I would second the use of "y" - also not surprisingly, since "y"
represents a vowel similar to schwa in Tokana orthography.  Using
"x" would only cause confusion, I think, insofar as there are no
natlang orthographies which use this symbol to represent a vowel
sound (IIRC).  Using "u" for schwa would also work (with "w" = /u/),
but doing that would make the orthography look to 'English-like'
for my tastes (not that that should matter to you :-)).  I like to
follow the majority of natlangs  and reserve "u" for a rounded vowel...

Matt.