Re: Alphabet
From: | Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> |
Date: | Friday, November 2, 2001, 9:51 |
Nik Taylor wrote:
>John Laury wrote:
> > I've realized
> > that (at least to my own knowledge) no writing systems
> > in existence actually do that.
>
>Japanese does! Well, not the nasal part, but Japanese kana has a
>diacritic that indicates voicing. Thus, "ka" plus that diacritic makes
>"ga". The "h" series becomes "b" with the voicing mark, but that's
>because in Old Japanese, what is now "h" was /p/. They've since
>invented another diacritic, traditionally called the "half-voiced mark"
>to show "p" from "h".
From what did these new "p"s arose, or are they just found in loans?
Andreas
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