Re: French spelling scheme

At 21:06 2001-04-30 -0400, Robert Hailman wrote:

>Well, I don't know that much French either, so Christophe & Co. would
>know better than me - _jaime_ would certainly be pronounced the same as
>_j'aime_, near as I can tell, although it would obscure the fact that
>(and I don't know if I'm phrasing this correctly) _j_ and _aime_ were
>seperate morphemes. I don't know how much that matters, though.
In shorthand French /@/, whether pronounced or not, is usually disregarded,
so that _j'aime_ is written however /ZEm/ would be written as a single
word.  I don't shorthand French myself, but I never heard that would be a
problem.  Rather the opposite.

That is not to say that I would be in favor of a longhand orthography of
French using such a device.  I guess I'ld go for _je èm_ (\em) or
_j'èm_.  My problem with the apostrophe is that it is all too easily
confused with an accent, especially in handwriting.

As for vowel spellings I would use the following, being unafraid of diacritics:

/a/ -> a

/A/ -> á  /a

/@/ -> e

/e/ -> é  /e

/E/ -> è  \e

/o/ -> o

/u/ -> ó  /o

/O/ -> ò  \o

/%/ -> u (closed _eu_)

/y/ -> ú  /u

/8/ -> ù  \u (open _eu_)

And now the nasal vowels:

/~a/ -> â  ^a

/~e/ -> ê  ^e

/~o/ -> ô  ^o

/~u/ -> û  ^u

and for symmetry...

/iN/ -> î  ^i

As for consonants I can think of several solutions, but I definitely would
prefer _nh_ and _lh_ for palatalized _n_ and _l_.  The silent _l_ idea is a
good one, but then _ll_ is needed to indicate pronounced final /l/, since
"silent e" is actuallu pronounced by some people it cannot be inserted
where not etymologically justified.

/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
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