Re: CONLANG Digest
| From: | Muke Tever <alrivera@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, May 18, 2000, 5:51 |
|---|
> From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Subject: Re: CONLANG Digest - 15 May 2000 to 16 May 2000 (#2000-134)
>
> > Has _no_ modern language ever done it?
>
> Yes, when there's been an official organization to declare correct
> usages, like the French Academy, which when founded, changed something
> like 25% of French spellings, especially replacing vowel-s with
> vowel-circumflex.
Hmmm..
> > Besides, all the people who were raised on the old spelling won't last
> > forever anyway. >;p
>
> But they're the ones that have to accept it.
And of course America never will... it'll just be "metric spelling" (a nice
idea with limited use and widely ignored).
> > I don't think it's an irregularity if it has the same vowel as
other -ila-
> > words. Considering that both phil- and -andr- aren't exactly English
words
> > either....
>
> But phil- (or rather -phile) is a fairly productive affix.
-phile gets its long I from the silent -e it ends in. Other -phil endings
like -philia (hemophilia), -philic (lipophilic), -philiac (hemophiliac) all
have short I or long E.
> > But in _none_ of them is the i /aj/ ! (If anything, the i is silent and
the
> > l is syllabic.)
>
> AND UNSTRESSED! When unstressed, a lot of vowels collapse into /@/.
But long I collapses to short I, not /@/. Divine -> divinity, sublime ->
sublimation.
> > What I'm saying is I don't see how "iland" for "island" would be read
with
> > long I when the regular formation is for 'ila' to have a short (or
> > schwa-ized, ok) I instead.
>
> But I (and I suspect most others) would think of other examples of
> i-consonant-vowel, like, e.g., "pilot" and assume /aj/.
I think people learn more rules than that.
People see u-consonant-vowel and don't always try to make /ju/:
mute /mjut/, cute /kjut/, muse /mjuz/, puke /pjuk/
but
lute /lut/, chute /Sut/, luke[warm] /luk/.
/lju/ and /Sju/ are _rare_ in English. So, apparently, is /ajl@/.
> Besides, it
> would be an improvement over "island", which looks like it should start
> with /ajs/ or /Is/. Indeed, I had a hispanic friend who always said
> /ajsl@nd/ for it, based on the spelling.
Well, in Spanish it _does_ have an s. <isla>.
> > Are there _any_ -ila- words with long I?
>
> Dilate, bilateral.
Of course both di- and bi- are common prefixes that have long I inherent to
them. The i- in <island> is not generally so perceived.
> > Yes, {c} is my conlanger's prettier-to-look-at-than-k /k/.
>
> Myself, I've always preferred <k> for /k/. <c> looks too much like <tS>
> to me.
Yes, it does, and I will worry about that if and when /tS/ appears. :)
> > /r\/ is "American r", as I've heard it called.
>
> American r is retroflex, pronounced by curling the front of the tongue
> backwards, that's represented in SAMPA by /r\`/. /r\/ is an alveolar
> approximate, which exists in some British dialects, but I don't know of
> it existing in America.
Ok, well I was _told_ /r\/ was American r, apparently a diacritic was
dropped. ;p
> From: James Campbell <james@...>
> Subject: Re: TECH: Unicode & Micro$oft font pack
>
> Pablo:
> > Do any of you have the URL for downloading the Micro$oft
> > font pack (the Arial/Times New Roman/Courier New/etc.
> > families that encode Latin Extended-A plus scattered
> > bits of Unicode)? I have them, but don't have the
> > address -- and the M$ site is so slow that I can't
> > get their search engine to work on time!
>
>
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm?fname=%20&fsize=
>
> This isn't Arial Unicode (the monster) but the "WGL4" character set
> (whatever that is) fonts. Probably sufficient for most needs.
> From: Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
> Subject: Re: more English orthography
>
> Marcus Smith wrote:
>
> > That basic point still stands, that I don't see how we could find an
> > underlying
> > pronunciation for the schwa in "comma." It may be best to consider it a
> > phoneme. I just don't know how to test that.
>
> In such a situation, I'd just do another "wug" test as you did before:
come
> up with a derivational morpheme, say, <t-ic> to get <commatic>*. Now,
> how would most people pronounce it? My native intuition says [k_h@m&rIk],
> where [r] is a voiced tap.
I want to throw in 'commatose'. Is it too late? ;)
> From: Marcus Smith <smithma@...>
> Subject: Re: CONLANG Digest - 15 May 2000 to 16 May 2000 (#2000-134)
>
> At 5/17/00 02:15 AM -0400, you wrote:
>
> >> Has _no_ modern language ever done it?
> >
> >Yes, when there's been an official organization to declare correct
> >usages, like the French Academy, which when founded, changed something
> >like 25% of French spellings, especially replacing vowel-s with
> >vowel-circumflex.
>
> Is there a "German Academy"? There was a German spelling reform inacted a
few
> years ago, but I have never heard of any official organization in charge
of
> German usage. Perhaps I've just missed references to it.
Hmm, I have this page in my bookmarks:
http://userpage.chemie.fu-berlin.de/diverse/doc/rechtschreibreform.html
If I knew German I might learn something...
> From: DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
> Subject: Re: more English orthography
>
> I think I've got a two-way distinction between Mary/merry vs. marry. Mary
> Poppins and Merry Christmas sound the same in my idiolect.
Must.. not.. comment on /papinz/ sounding like /krism@s/ !! ;)
> From: DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
> Subject: Re: more English orthography
>
> My two cents: I don't consider myself that old, but I guess I'm a
> curmudgeonly old traditionalist. Words like "thru", "lite", and "nite" are
> so intimately attached to (gimmicky) advertising in my mind ("drive-thru",
> "Seven Seas Lite Dressing", and perhaps on a cinema marquee [where space
is
> limited] "Half price tonite")(where I readily accept them), that aside
from
> experimental poetry, I'd have a hard time dealing with such spellings in a
> serious piece of prose.
Yay!
> From: Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
> Subject: Re: more English orthography
>
> On Wed, 17 May 2000 22:32:58 -0700 DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
> writes:
> > (as, say, "draft" for "draught" or "plow" for "plough"), than
>
> Huh?
> I always thought that "draft" /dr\e@ft/ and "draught" /dr\Ot/ were two
> different words.
There's two words "draught" (in my experience).
One is the same as "draft"--an unwanted breeze, a kind of horse, a
descriptor of beverages
I also have "draught" pronounced somewhat like yours, also a drink-word
(I have <draft> as an adjective: "draft beer", and <draught> as a noun: "a
draught of..." but rare.)
> And i don't think i ever realized that "plow" /plow/ and "plough" /pl&w/
> were the same...or maybe the reading-pronounciation is reversed, i'm not
> sure.
They're the same word with me.
> From: DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
> Subject: Re: more English orthography
>
> I also don't understand your distinction between plow and plough (both of
> which I pronounce /plaU/). This refers to what we do to snow in New
England
> in the winter or what a farmer uses to till the land. What's /plow/?
What's
> /pl&w/? Spelling reformers, are you watching? :)
Mmm, the wonderful world of spelling pronunciations...
*Muke!
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