On Fri, 30 Oct 1998 18:35:43 +0000, "Raymond A. Brown"
<raybrown@...> wrote:
>So is /g/ really written as {q} and /N/ as {g} ? Or is the Romanization
>{'gq}. I've never been overfond of the convention {q} in several
>conlangs (Does any natlang use this convention?) but {q} seems strange.
Not exactly (AFAIK), but Fijian uses {q} for [Ng]. I can think of two
possible origins of {q} for [N]: either it's an easily typed letter that
looks similar to eng, or it's one of the letters that's most often "left
over" when assigning letters to phonemes. and thus available for
non-standard uses.
>So we need an eight symbol. I have come across {x} for /@/ and {q} for =
/O/
>- but only in conlangs & I don't like either convention; besides Funus
>Romanization will need both these symbols as consonants. The only =
solution
>must be to extend the Roman alphabet, as many natlangs have done. But =
if
>you want to use plain ASCII (by which, I assume you mean ASCII 32 =
throught
>to ASCII 217) then our choice is somewhat restricted; possible, it seems=
to
>me, are: &, @, ^, # and ~. The last is so suggestive of some nasal =
sound
>that I think we can discount it immediately.
There's actually a natlang (Marshallese?) that uses & as a vowel. I've =
used
numbers as vowels in some of my languages.