Re: "Useful languages"

From: "Clint Jackson Baker" <litrex1@...>

| I would also add Cherokee to the list, at least in
| theory.  The expectation in Cherokee is for you to
| spell it the way it sounds, and if two people spell
| something differently it's not a big deal because it
| will be similar and mutually understood anyway.
| Actually, when Sequoyah was first developping the
| syllabary, he had over 250 symbols, because he was
| trying to account for every sound in spoken Cherokee.
| Then he realized he was accounting for dialectal
| difference which wouldn't be necessary in the written
| language and reduced the number considerably.  (BTW
| people usually say that there are 88 symbols in the
| Cherokee syllabary.  There are actually a few more for
| variants--eg "na" vs. "hna".)

I only see 85 in Unicode, unless there are some rare variants that didn't get
included.

| But, like I said, "in theory"... Like any language, it
| has evolved beyond the written form, but it is
| understandable--at this stage in the game Sequoyah is
| a national hero (meaning the Cherokee nation) and
| no-one would want to mess with his creation.  For
| example, what was origianlly the sound /ts/ has split
| into /ts/, /tS/, and /dZ/, yet they all use the /ts/
| symbols.

Yeah, and "ta" and "da" are normally valued as /tha/ and /ta/, with various
lenitions in different situations and dialects. Some syllabrics can have four or
five possible pronunciations. Also, there's one strange letter called "nah" (it
looks like a capital letter G), and I've never been able to find its exact sound
value.

~Danny~


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