Re: Piat (was: Another NatLang i like)

At 12:49 -0400 14.7.1999, John Cowan wrote:
>A Rosta wrote:
>
>> I'm sure this is the first time we have been told anything about Piat
>> phonology. Are we going to hear more?
>
>Here's what I posted back in June 1996:
>
>Piat is a fictional language spoken in a fictional country somewhere
>in Central Europe.  It is probably a language isolate.
>
[snip]

>        "c", an unvoiced velar stop
>                (written "k" in international words like "kilometre",
>                pronounced "cilometwe");
[snip]

>        "z", an unvoiced dental affricate, like "ts" in English "cats";
>        "dz", a voiced dental affricate, like "ds" in English "gods";
[snip]

This mapping seems awfully strange for a Central European language.  One
would have expected /k/="k", /ts/="c", /dz/="z" for a language in that part
of the world, especially in view of the fine one phoneme--one letter
mapping that applies otherwise.  (I don't think "ch" is too bad an
exception, though, since even the Czech retained that digraph, not
withstanding that "h'" would have been a natural choice in terms of the
principles on which Hus built his orthography!)

/BP -- in opinionated mode... B-)=@

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)