First report on Coní

Christian Thalmann wrote:

> > As of now, I can give you a teaser. There are six vowels:
>   >
>   > /I E a O U 8/
>   >
>   > There's a rule which says that when a vowel is stressed, it
>   > becomes tense: /i e a o u }/.
> Isn't this a phonetic rather than a phonemic alteration?  It
> would be better to use [...] instead of /.../ then.
You're right.

> And what about /a/?  It could become [A] in the tense or lax
> position...
We thought about that, but she wanted to keep [a]
when stressed as well.
>  > /8/ is written |û| as of now (u + circumflex).
> I'm never fond of writing systems that assign complex glyphs
> such as |û| to a low-profile vowel such as /8/.  IMHO, a vowel
> that goes unnoticed in speech shouldn't stick out and wave its
> hands in writing.  But that's totally subjective of course.
I agree. But if it *isn't* used as a schwa, then it's not
more low-profile than any other vowel.

> I would suggest |y| for the schwa, as Welsh does it AFAIK.  Or
> since /8/ is basically /o/-flavored schwa, |ø| would also work.
> The slash even suggests a certain "reducedness" that would fit
> the concept of /8/.
Yes, |y| is a good idea. The problem is that it's already
used for other phonemes. (The palatalized series of consonants.)
There might be a way around this, though, by changing those
graphemes to something else.

/ø/. Now, that's an idea. I want to pronounce it /2/, but
that's a minor problem.

> Finally, you could just keep |u| for /8/ and use |w| or |û| or
> |ou| or something for /u/ instead.
Yes, several good ideas. I'll forward this mail to her and
we'll see what she thinks.

> All these proposals are aimed at a schwa that stays central
> under stress.  |Y|, |ø| or |u| would be a bit weird for [{].
> Not impossible, though.
> If you insist on /8/ being realised as [{] under stress, you
> might want to use |æ| (ae ligature) instead.
No, I didn't write [{]. I wrote [}], that is the central,
close, rounded vowel. You know, like [u-]. Swedish "u".

> Hmmm.  I tend to abstain from diacritics as far as possible, since
> they make the written text so messy.  Why not just write /ja/ as
> |ja| or |ya| or even |ia|?
Well, I think she likes those diacritics, but perhaps she
could use some other transliteration system, like |ya| in
e-mail. I admit that |ä| is a bit odd for /ja/. I want to
pronounce it /&/, and I'm sure you want something similar,
(like /E/ :).

> As for stress marking:  As long as you don't want a stressed /8/,
> you're fine, just use acutes.  You could even keep |  | for pre-
> palatalisation and define | %| + |  | =: |^|.
Yes, that's what I was thinking.

> Otherwise, you'd have to improvise.  If you use |y| for /8/, you
> could denote stress with the diaeresis, since it can be placed on
> |y|: |ÿ|.  I hear PCs can also put acutes onto |y|, but Macs can't.
> Finally, you can put acutes and hats onto just about all of the
> above-mentioned symbols with Unicode, but be advised that it doesn't
> turn out nice on all platforms.
All good ideas. I'll have to check them with her and see what
she thinks.

> Yet another possibility would be to use digraphs for stressed
> letters, e.g. |Conii|.
Ah. Neat. That's what I do in Piata. Long phonemes are doubled.
I'm not sure if that fits Coni though. I think she's quite fond
of those diacritics. But as I said, we'll see. I'll get back on
this as soon as possible.

NotSoObNatlang: How come "ASAP" sounds like "right away, right
this minute", while "as soon as possible" sounds more like "when
I get the time, which very well might be tomorrow"?

Daniel Andreasson