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Another symbol

From:Remi Villatel <maxilys@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 12, 2006, 15:50
Hi List,

I'm back to business.  ;-)  I'm revising Shaquelingua to update my website
and I'm stumbling on the new orthography.

Formerly, when two consonants following each other in the middle of a word
shouldn't be pronounced as a cluster, I used the "mute vowel h". It also
indicated that the preceding consonant should be "softened". For example:

gakhsēlo [gag.sE4o] = promess
jishso [jiz.so] = child
pikhkū [pig.k8] = flux

It was fine because "h" isn't part of the orthography but I'd would like to
change it and I don't have a single idea about with what I could
replace "h".

Removing it isn't a good idea. Even if most of the time the syllable break
is obvious, I need to keep an indication of the consonant "softening".
Usually, everybody complains about the lack of vowels, but I now do the
same about the lack of consonants. I can't replace every consonant+h with
its "softened" version. Some just don't exist. I have:

c [C]  -> ch [Z] = "x"
f [f]  -> fh [v] = "v"
j [j\] -> jh [j] = What?
k [k]  -> kh [g] = "g"
l [4]  -> lh [5] = What?
p [p]  -> ph [b] = "b"
r [X]  -> rh [x] = What?
s [s]  -> sh [z] = "z"
t |t]  -> th [d] = "d"
y [H]  -> yh [w] = What?

Diacritics aren't an option since there is none that would go with all these
consonants. The hyphen and the apostrophe already have their role elswhere.
The "x" is already used. I can't even use a diacritic over the preceding
vowel because some may already carry a macron. A comma or a question mark
in the middle of a word don't look right. So...

I'm stuck!

For the moment, I'm using the middle dot "·" but I don't think that's the
holy grail either. It will just make my life easier when I will search and
replace it.

ktapaj·sū [ktapaj.s8] = problem -> ktapaj?sū

There are nice shaquean words (IMHO) like kulir·rū [ku4ix.X8] (depth),
ruzul·li [Xuzu5.4i] (experiment) or yōraj·xi [wOXaj.Zi] (interest) and they
deserve a nice orthography.

Where is my holy grail? I'm opened to all suggestions...

--
==================
Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
==================

Reply

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>