Re: proto-romance questions

At 21:28 -0600 14.12.1999, J. Barefoot wrote:
>> >
>> >stops: p t k b d g {pi tau kappa beta delta gamma} <-- Greek orthography!
>>
>>I like that (the Greek orthography)!  Kind of reminiscent of Romanian
>>when it wasn't using Roman letters.
>
>Thank you. It's a combination of my two long-time dreams - a romance
>language and a plausible reason to have a Greek orthography. At first I
>thought, Why would a romance language not use the Latin alphabet? Then I
>remembered Romanian and was filled with a great joy.
I especially like the Old Rumanian mapping of Theta (which became "Fita" in
the Cyrillic alphabet) to /ft/.  Too bad that wasn't taken up elsewhere!

As for the question of how to represent palatals in the Greek alphabet, it
should be remembered that Eta became /i/ early on in Greek; this makes it
reasonable to use Eta for /i/ and Iota for /j/, so that e.g. /tS/ =
Tau+Sigma+Iota.  I once made up a con-orthography based on Greek with this
mapping, and even Upsilon was used analogically for /v/, while
Omicron+Upsilon was /u/ and /o/ = Omega.  The most peculiar thing was that
while /S/ was Sigma+Iota I had to use Sigma+Chi for /x/, since Chi = /h/.
I also used the Medieval Greek convention with the final form of Sigma for
initial and medial /st/.

Jennifer, you would like to get Hall's volume on P-R morphology as well.
If you can't get it, just ask me if you wonder anything, since I got it.  I
also got Meyer-Luebke's etymological dictionary of Romance.




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
            Anant' avanaute quettalmar!               \ \
   __  ____ ____    _____________  ___ __   __ __     / /
   \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  _____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
   / /   / /  /  \    / /Melroch\ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
  / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /Melarocco\_  // /__/ // /__/ /
 /_________//_/  \_\/ /Eowine__   / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
I neer Pityancalimeo\ \_____/ /ar/ /_atar Mercasso naan
~~~~~~~~~Cuinondil~~~\_______/~~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda cuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)