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

At 3:02 PM -0500 11/14/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>For reasons better not goten into, I've finally decided on Kalini Sapak's
>phonemic inventory:
>
>a i u
>
>p t k
>b d g
>f s x h
>v z G
>m n N
>
>w j
>l r
>
>Nothing fancy here (but see on assimilations below ...), but romanization
>invloves a trio of problems: /x G N/.
>
>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?
Yes. Use <x> for /x/, <j> for /G/, and <q> for /N/; this means you'll
have to use something else for /j/; how about <y>? So your inventory
becomes:

        a i u
        p t k
        b d g
        f s x h
        v z j
        m n q

        w y
        l r

>The rest are going to be the same as IPA, except /j/ which'll be written "y"
>for aesthetical reasons.
Well, there you go! <y> for /j/ is already built in.

Dirk