Re: CHAT: YAC: or more exactly: yet another conlang sketch

Irina Rempt sikayal:

> > > 'c@ciul@', the latter
> > > being the little bow above the 'a' occurring in Romanian
>
> > In English this is usually called a breve, no?  I didn't know the
> > Romanian word for it--thanks!
>
> It means "little cap".
>
> I thought a breve was the straight flat line above a vowel like in
> Latin textbooks?
No, that's a macron.  In the phonetics used by many English dictionaries
and that I was taught as a second grader, the macron and the breve have
opposite uses: the former indicates "long" sounds and the former
"short" sounds. This is only meant as an aid to learning to read, though.

>
>    Irina
>
> --
>            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
> irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_