Re: Alphabet

From: "John Laury"

>My "phonetic
> discoveries" consisted of deriving p, b, and m (as well
> as other similar sound relationships) from the same
> basic letter, with a "hard (voiceless)" marker and
> a "don't open your mouth (nasal)" marker to
> differentiate.  I might still try to do something like
> that, but in studying more languages, I've realized
> that (at least to my own knowledge) no writing systems
> in existence actually do that.
Géarthnuns has 28 consonant sounds proper, and of those, 14 consist of seven
voiced/unvoiced pairs, the voiced being marked by a "sekens", a diacritical
voicing mark that looks, uncannily, a lot like an accent aigu :). Hence
(romanized):

p  /p/     vs.  p'  /b/  (romanized: b)
t  /t/       vs.  t'  /d/   (r: d)
k  /k/     vs. k'  /g/   (r: g)
s  /s/      vs. s'  /z/    (r: z)
th /T/     vs. th' /D/   (r: dh)
sh /S/    vs. sh' /dZ/  (r:  j)
w  /w/   vs. w'  /v/    (r: v)

Yes, yes, I know the last two are technically incorrect, but these were
formed in my callow youth and I am ill-disposed to change them now. I
thought of setting up some historical excuse (like maybe w was originally
/B/ or something), but frankly, I haven't been especially interested. I like
the inconsistent quirkiness. Meanwhile:

/C/, /C<vcd>/, /Z/, and /tS/ are separate letters.

> I see a lot of people discussing ways to write their
> languages using Roman letters.  Do most people here
> tend to create new alphabets or do they stick to
> established writing systems?
Géarthnuns had its own alphabet from the very get-go, but it has evolved,
albeit marginally, over its twenty-odd year (real time) history. I'm not
overjoyed with the romanization system; it looks very "conlangy" to me. But
it's a one-to-one correspondence, it fits the bill for email, (and besides,
I don't like the look of Russian when it's romanized either, and *it* does
its job), so it's very unlikely to change. Here at home, Géarthnuns written
away from the computer (even for translation exercises and relays) is always
written in its own script, which I then transliterate as I type for general
consumption.

Kou