Re: Japanese Long Consonants

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:38:28 +0000, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@...> wrote:
> >
> > From: Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...>
> >
> > On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:45:52 +0100, Chris Bates
> > <chris.maths_student@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > which I guess is why I find it easier to hear the difference in Japanese
> > > than in a language like Hungarian (where the long consonants aren't
> > > formed by adding glottal stops). I was thinking of introducing into a
> > > language a system of three accents:
> > >
> > > unaccented eg i       short
> > > acute accent eg í      long
> > > grave accent eg ì     short, terminated by glottal stop.
> > >
> > > So for instance I guess nippon written using this system would be nìpon.
> > > But I'm not sure about this... I'm not sure if I should have long vowels
> > > that can terminate with a glottal stop as well.
> >
> > If you do, you could use the circumflex.
>
> THat's what I was thinking, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to do long
> vowels + glottal stops. My brain keeps trying to cut them off early and
> make them short.
AFAIK, Finnish has a four-way VC - V:C - VC: - V:C: distinction, and
IIRC Swedish (or common Scandinavian?) used to as well. So it's not
unheard-of (though they may not have used glottal stop for their C:
segments).

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