Re: Aelya Phonology

Aidan Grey <urso@...> wrote:

>What do ya think?

It seems you've worked a lot on it! Looks quite good
to me. The only critic I have is to the way you describe
orthography and phonology in a mixed fashion (e. g. you
say there are geminate consonants in word-final position
and then you add 'orthographically'!). For a clearer
description, you should keep both things apart. The use
of <y> as both /@/ and /j/ is not a good idea if you ask
me, unless your oym uses an equivalent letter for both
sounds too; it may not be so confusing to the reader,
but it complicates the description of the phonology
(you're forced to clarify over and over "when it's a
consonant", "when it represents the schwa", etc.

First you should describe the phonology, in terms of
sounds, syllable structure, etc.; and then the orthography,
in terms of letters, referring back to the phonology when
needed (e. g. when you want to explain an orthographical
convention by mentioning a phonological change which took
place in past stages of the language.) In the simplest
case, the orthography's description could be no more than
a simple mapping of sounds into letters as a list of
rules.

A minor pick also: you might use the IPA for the initial
chart of sounds, then explain the non-English sounds and
non-straightforward IPA symbols. Either that, or you avoid
IPA altogether.

Hope this helps...


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_