Re: Naming the conlang

On Monday, July 12, 2004, at 03:34 , Scotto Hlad wrote:

> Hi Ray,
> Thanks for the advise on the IPA symbols.
You're welcome.
[snip]
> I meant that the sound for 'ou' was a diphthong (the word I learned many
> years ago to mean the sound that 2 vowels combined making one sound.)
That's quite correct.

> I
> didn't mean that Omega was a diphthong. When I learned the sounds of
> Greek,
> it was in 2 years of Greek classes taken to get my religious education
> degree. Omega was what I learned in primary school "long o." I suppose I
> could have said that the 's' was not voiced.
Ancient Greek & New Testament Greek are nearly always given conventional
pronunciation, usually vaguely based on what we were probably the ancient
values but adapted to conform to English (or French, or German, or Spanish
or whatever) pronunciation. The Greek themselves and some others simply
used the modern Greek pronunciation.

You probably did pronounce omega as [ou] in your Greek classes; it's the
sound generally used in America for the 'o' in 'note'.  When I was at
school we pronounced it [@u] which is way we say the same sound in
southern England. In Wales and in much of northern England & Scotland they
have just a plain long vowel [o:] which, in fact, is likely to have been
the sound of omega in the Hellenistic period.

> Now that I have looked at the chart showing the CXS system, perhaps you
> could point me somewhere on the interenet where I can hear the sounds
> again
> and remember IPA as having looked at this chart I can see that I my memory
> is not nearly as good as my forgettory.
I'm don't know a URL off hand - but I'm sure some list members will help
us  :)

> I know so well the difference in that English pronounciations vary. I'm
> from
> the US and live in Canada. A southern US accent versus Bronx and
> Newfoundland are all so markedly different.
>
> Suffice it to say that I'm a hobby linguist and look forward to learning
> more about it.
I'm also a hobby linguist - just been at the hobby for some 55 years but
still learning  :)

Cheers

Ray
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