Re: Schwa vowel, which letter?

At 11:47 -0700 on 6.10.1998, 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 ...
If you still haven't decided, here are two other schemes that I've used in
one of my langs:

         /i/  /e/  /E/  /@/
SCHEME 1  y    i         e
SCHEME 2  i    y         e
SCHEME 3  y    i    e    v
SCHEME 4  i    y    e    v

They are chronologically ordered, i.e. scheme 4 was the final one.  The
lang had a bilabial/labiodental approximant phoneme written "w", and as can
be seen it acquired an open mid /E/ in the course of its development, which
called for a reassignment of "e" and a new schwa letter.  The mapping of
"y" to /e/ was based on the usual Romanization of Ukrainian: the Ukrainian
vowels corresponding to Russian (Romanized!) "y" /@/ and "e" /E/ are
phonetically [e] and [E], or close enough.

/BP


B.Philip. Jonsson <bpj@...>

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant (Tacitus)
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