Re: Romanized Orthography of My Conlang

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
> > Oh, surely "reheat" is /ri$hit/ and "singing" is /siN$iN/ where $ is
> > syllable division, no?
>
> Perhaps, but it seems rather artificial to say draw syllable-boundaries
> that way.  The only way I know of to indicate objectively
> syllable-boundaries is that English vowels are short before
> syllable-final voiceless obstruents (/sit/ vs. /si:/ or /si:d/)
Well, the condition you mention would be enough to establish [ri$hit]
as the correct syllable division (assuming we're willing to call the
glottal fricative 'h' a voiceless obstruent), that and the possibility
of generalizing the unwieldy "no [h] at the ends of words or in the
position V_CV" to the sleek and stylish "no [h] as a coda."

It seems that it would be just as useful to assume that [siN$iN] is
correct, because it would allow one to generalize the lumpish "no [N]
at the ends of words or in the position VC_V" to the sexy "no [N] as
an onset."

It's obvious to me that [h] doesn't work as a coda in English,
because of a subjective experience I had.  I have a friend named
Ahmad, and I asked him about the nature of the first consonant in his
name, and he said, "what are you talking about?  It's an [h], just
like in English."  And when I listened, I realized it was!  I thought
it was an [x] or something more exotic, but it was only an [h], a
sound that *should* have been perfectly familiar to me as an English
speaker.  But it sounded alien to me -- I didn't even recognize it --
because it was a syllable coda, and in English, h's never exist in
syllable codas.

-------------------------------------------------
             edheil@postmark.net
-------------------------------------------------