Re: Holic and other languages

Quoting Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...>:

> Phonemic inventory
> p  t  tj  k        i     u
> b  d  dj  g        e     o
> f  s  sj  x  h        a
> v  z  zj  q
> m  n  nj  c
>     l  lj
>     r
>        y   w
>
> (The series followed by "j" I refer to as the palatal series, though
> its
> exact place of articulation varies with dialect.)
>
> I wanted something that could be rendered in the roman alphabet
> without
> need for diacritics: this was after all intended as the main culture of
> the
> book, and I didn't want it to look too "foreign".  On the other hand,
> I
> didn't want it to look particularly familiar, as it is not meant to be
> the
> "reader identification" culture.
>
> (Incidentally, I have since had objections that using q for the voiced
> velar fricative and c for the velar nasal is just too weird.  Other
> proposals have been to use sx zx nx or sq zq nq for x q c.  I'd
> vaguely
> like to hear opinions on the matter.)

One of my conlangs, Kalini Sapak, uses, in romanization, x j q for [x G N]
(=velar voiceless fricative, voiced fricative, and nasal; ie your x q c). The
justificatio for "q" is that Fijian uses it for [Ng], and for "j" that Spanish
uses if for [x] and that it's voiced pretty much everywhere else. "x" for [x]
does not need any justification in my mind - it's alot less weird than "sx"
or "sq", at any rate.

If you want something more familiar-looking, and assuming that it does not
create too much ambuiguity, you could consider "kh", "gh" and "ng" - but I
guess you've got your reasons to avoid these "obvious" spellings.

                                                      Andreas