Re: CHAT letter names (was: CHAT Etruscana etc)

On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 06:26:47AM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> [ai] is strictly two vowels.
That depends on whom you ask, but you can always join them with a tie bar to
indicate otherwise: X-SAMPA [a_i], CXS [ai)].

> I would wish to put inverted breve beneath the 'i' to show that
> it is non-syllabic,  but can't, so I use [j] instead.
In both CXS and X-SAMPA the IPA "non-syllabic" diacritic is represented
by the sequence _^.  So [ai_^] would be an exact equivalent of the IPA
usage you describe.

> I was under the impression that this usage was fairly standard on this list.
The use of [j] and [w] in diphthongs instead of [i] and [u] is fairly
widespread, and not just on this list, but we don't do it because of the
limitations of ASCII; after all, we have an all-ASCII system with the full
expressive power of the IPA at our disposal.

> '(h)y psilon' as opposed to '(h)y diphthongos' which we would now say as:
> "y written with a single vowel symbol" (i.e. Y) and "y written with two
> vowel symbols" (i.e. OI). It dates from the period when OI and Y were both
> pronounced as [y] and AFAIK the names are not attested until the Byzantine
> era.
Ah!  Thank you.  I was wondering what was being distinguished here.

> Likewise the later names 'o micron' and 'o mega' were coined to name the
> two letters after length distinction had been lost and the two vowels
> became pronounced the same way as they still are in modern Greek.
An interesting tidbit of which I was unaware until yesterday: as in
Latin, what was originally purely a quantitative difference between
short and long vowels developed over time into a quantitative
difference.  And, as in Latin, the resulting two vowels for <o> were [o]
and [O].  However, their rôles in Greek were reversed - short <o>
(mikron) was [o], while long <o> (mega) was [O:].  That just seems very
odd to me. :)

-Mark

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