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Re: Minza spelling reform

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Thursday, January 26, 2006, 14:45
Herman Miller skrev:

> One thing I'm not sure about is whether it's a good thing to use "ǧ" (g > with wedge/caron) to represent [G]. I think it's nice that most of the > accented consonants (except l-slash, ł) use the same diacritic (a > wedge), but on the web page "ǧ" shows up in a different font than the > rest of the text since it's not in the default Times New Roman font (and > I suspect not in most readers' default web fonts either). And I don't > even know what sounds are typically written with g-wedge, so I don't > know how unusual it would be to use it to represent [G]. I was > considering "ğ" (g-breve) for a while, but I liked the symmetry of using > the wedge for everything.
The most well-known use of g-wedge is as a device in transliterating Arabic, since the letter pronounced [dZ] in other places is pronounced [g] in Egyptian Arabic, so from that perspective g-wedhe for [G] is dead wrong. Semiticists and Indologists generally use g with a dot above and Germanicists use g with a line through the descender, while Turkicists use g-breve and Mongolianists gamma. I would recommend g-dot since it is in the Latin Extended A range and hence in Times New Roman, but I have another more radical suggestion, namely to use q (yes /kju:/!) since the Arabic letter usually transliterated q is pronounced [G] or [R] in Persian. The UniPers suggested Roman alphabet for Persian uses q generally for [G]/[R]. Simplified phonetic transcription of Icelandic also uses q for [G], since Icelandic can then be transcribed using the characters on an ordinary Icelandic keyboard, using I Y ö e for /I Y 2 E/. I also have to admit that my conlang family Sohlob also uses q for /G/. -- /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se "Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it means "no"! (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

Replies

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>
Herman Miller <hmiller@...>