Re: "Useful languages"

Siyo!

--- Danny Wier <dawier@...> wrote:
> 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.
>
Sorry, I *really* can't count.  I must have been
thinking of piano keys...

> | 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~
>
>
My guess is that nah is pronounced like it's
transliterated, /nah/, approaching /nax/.  But IIRC
it's fairly rare anyway.

Oh, if only it were feasible to learn a tonal language
out of a book! :c

Clint
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Got something to say? Say it better with Yahoo! Video Mail
http://mail.yahoo.com

Reply