Re: Kalini Sapak bits (or How to buse the letter "X" ...)

John Cowan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>
>>Now, I don't want to use any digraphs (esp as that's only 23 phonemes and
>>the Latin alphabet 's got 26 letters). My current idea is "q" for /x/
>>(Somali does this), "c" for /G/ (after-all, "c" is related to gamma ...)
>>and, take a deep breath, "x" for /N/. I know this last is pretty
>>counter-intuitive, but "x" is used for a bit of everything around the
>>world, so why not a velar nasal? Also, pretty much everything else is
>>already
>
>>used.  Anyone got any comments/ideas?
>
>
>I suggest swapping "q" and "x"; "x" then aligns with IPA, and "q" with
>Fijian (sort of).
>
Sort of? What exactly does "q" mean in Fijian? We-ell, it just occured to me
that visually "q" isn't extremely far from lowercase eta, so I think I'll go
with your suggestion unless someone comes up with something even better.
>
>>/yawal/ "star (ACC)" is ['jQwal]
>>/yiwal/ "starrier" is ['jywal]
>>
>>/qayak/ "horse" is ['xEjak]
>>/quyaku/ "(he) rides" is ['xyjaku]
>
>
>These seem unnatural to me.  Umlauts like this usually involve
>anticipation, but [a] is not rounded, so I wouldn't expect
>it to round preceding [a] to [Q] or [i] to [y].
>Otherwise all looks good!

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. [a] isn't rounded, sure, but the [a]
isn't rounding anything either! The "umlauts" are caused by the semivowels -
[w] is certainly rounded, and [j] is front high.

                                          Andreas

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