"Jeff Rollin" <jeff.rollin@...> wrote:
> The main problem I see is that C could become seriously overloaded:
one
> system I have considered using involves "c" for /ts/, c-caron for
/tS/,
> c-dot for the palatal plosive and c-cedilla for the palatal fricative;
does
> anyone (else) think this could be seriously confusing? I am open to
using
> "x" for the velar or uvular fricative, but whichever I represent with
it,
> what about the other, and what could I use to avoid writing "ks" at
the end
> of words?
>
> As far as possible I should like to resist the "Klingon approach" of
using
> capital letters to denote separate sounds, as this is orthographically
ugly
> (as one can imagine, a beautiful orthography was no issue in the
> transcription of Klingon!). I don't object to using q and Q,
(respectively
> for the glottal and uvular stop) though, for some reason (!). (If you
want
> to persuade me, attempt to persuade me that this will increase the
> orthographic similarity to Bantu, hint!)
>
> I would also like to be able to use some single letters for affricates
(the
> ones I envisage using are /ts/ /tS/ /tT/ /cC/ and maybe /kx/ /qX/. Any
> ideas?
Rich phonemic inventory, Latin alphabet, few digraphs, few diacritics,
letter case not used as a diacritic. Pick four. Would you be open to
constructing a neography and adopting a romanization that uses digraphs?
> I.e., given a language in which "pam" could be a word, but not "pram"
> (because of a restriction on consonant clusters in initial position)
are
> languages any words in which "spam" could be a word, despite the
> aforementioned restriction, due to pre-fricativized consonants?
It's possible that <spam> would be parsed as "s pam", where "s" is a
syllabic consonant. Japanese does this, where "Spain" is romanized
<Supein>, under the rule that <u> and <i> between voiceless
consonants tend to become mute. Heck, Spanish itself does this,
where <España> is parsed as "es pa ña".
> I'm trying to get rid of pronouns; does anyone know of a language
> which uses no pronouns (not even nouns instead of pronouns, like
> Japanese) at all?
Justin Rye doesn't seem to think so:
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/lingo.html
> CONTEXTUALITY
> Meanwhile, phenomena that are directly apparent or previously
> established can be referred back to by means of special shortcut
> forms - pronouns and point-of-view-dependent expressions as in
> "you were behind them". Aliens with no way of expressing the
> first person (even as "this person now speaking") are unlikely --
> they'd need unique absolute identifiers for every person, place,
> moment and event!
"Jeff Rollin" <jeff.rollin@...> wrote:
> If I used a general "root" meaning "thing", or "object" (as in Bantu,
> -ntu, where "ubu-ntu" means something like "thing for humanity")
> which could take possessive, predestinative, gender, number, and
> case affixes, I could get rid of possessive and demonstratives
Your word for "thing" would be reanalyzed as a pronoun, where
your "papery-object" would be reanalyzed as a noun class.
> Gender/noun-class: I'm trying to move beyond the traditional
> masculine/feminine(/neuter) gender distinction into a Bantu-inspired
> noun-class system for things like professionals, one for languages,
and one
> for inhabitants ( e.g. as if one said "the wise-r bak-er", "the
> passionate-an Itali-an", "broken-ish Engl-ish". Has anyone designed a
> language like this?
Heard of Dilingo?
> 5. Palatalised consonants, even in the face of words like "atja"
/atja/
> (bird) are easy, since the Roman alphabet has both j and y, which can
be
> used for either palatalisation or a [j] phoneme, and "j" is not used
for
> anything else (such as Z, the "s" in "pleasure"). However,
combinations such
> as "nyk" and even "nyj" are ugly and are apt to be pronounced by
English
> speakers as "nick" and "nidge" anyway - any thoughts? (Perhaps
palatalised
> consonants in clusters (and at the end of words) should be denoted
by -j-
> instead of -y-?)
Pronouncing /anjka/ like Ms. Sörenstam's name would just be
considered the English gringo accent.
> 6. Labialised and aspirated consonants also present a problem,
> since the language can have both aspirated "t" and "t" followed
> by "h" (and other combinations)
Wouldn't these tend to fall together within a generation or two as the
children learn the language?
> and the Roman alphabet has no variations on h or w analogous
> to the j/y split.
The u/w split? Spanish doesn't have <w>, but it has <hu>.
--
Damian