Barry Garcia wrote:
>
>Kristian: I'm glad you and Phillip caught my "mistakes" before I had these
>put down as definate (it's kind of good Paul Bennett doesnt seem to be
>around, since he wanted to do a font)!
Just don't ask me to do your conlanging for you ;)
>>You could also just have one mark after a glyph to mark /o/ - also a
>>'fossilized' mark for /a:/ but where the mark for prototypical /e/ has
>>been disregarded when marking /o/. This last option appeals to me for
>>a language without /a:/ like Salaangal. Buginese does this.
>
>Good idea! I do actually like this scheme best. I think this will be the
>system for /o/. On Buginese, i had a book of different fonts I borrowed
>from my school's library. Interesting book for script ideas. So, if the
>mark for /o/ goes after the glyph, should the mark for /au/ follow (since
>you say it's a variant form of /o/)?
Hmmm... on second thought, you might want to keep the mark for /e/
when marking /o/ since /au/ is prototypically marked by using the
mark for /e/ twice and the mark for /a:/ once. I apologize for being
extremely vague when I just said that /au/ was a variant of /o/.
I think the reason why Buginese can suffice without the mark for
/e/ to represent /o/ is because it does not represent diphthongs.
So it would not need to represent /e/ twice to represent /au/.
But perhaps you can come up with some other reason why the
prototypical mark for /e/ would disappear when marking /o/ and /au/
in Ranaka.
>>They simply don't exist - at least not prototypically. You would have to
>>resort to using a virama (e.g. /ej/ /oj/ /iw/ with a virama applied to the
>>consonants), or invent your own diacritics.
>
>I think I shall stick with my own diacritics for these.
But keep them historically motivated if you want to be realistic.
Perhaps the consonants with a virama got reinterpreted as diacritics.
So /ei/ for instance could be represented by the diacritic for /e/
combined with another diacritic that developed from /j/ + virama
ligature.
-kristian- 8)