Re: Schwa vowel, which letter?

Herman Miller wrote:

> If available, you might consider a variant of e or o (perhaps a slashed o,
> or e with dieresis). The number 3, which looks similar to the reverse
> epsilon, is another possibility. But of the basic 26 Latin letters, "y" is
> probably the best choice. I can't think of a language that uses "x" as a
> vowel (although Cherokee uses a "v"), but "w" and "y" are both used in
> Welsh, and many other languages use "y" as a vowel of some kind.
But when Sequoya (sp?) created the Cherokee alphabet, he didn't
make any letters cross over whatsoever, because he couldn't read
(or maybe even speak) English.  The story goes that one day he just
realized that the White Man's strenght lay in his ability to record
information, so he bought a local newspaper and took letters off
the newspaper, and created his own phonetic alphabet for Cherokee
(or maybe it was a syllabary, can't remember which) with 85
characters (come to think of it, it was probably a syllabary).

So, naturally, he had lots of characters that looked like English
orthographic vowels.  The Cherokee still use his system, BTW.


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"Ille se profecisse sciat cui Cicero valde placebit."
   - poster found on professor's door.
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