Shalom, Peter!
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 5:50 PM
> I haven't quite figured out
> what the nature of this document is (perhaps a list of Enamyn cities in
Khazar-
> controlled Crimea that the Byzantine cities traded with, or maybe a
merchant's
> guide to essential Enamyn words, or something of that ilk), but it is
essential
> that the ninth-century Byzantine would have been able to look at the Greek
> letters and give a reasonably close pronunciation of the Enamyn word.
Can we see smwhere on the Web the samples of Enamyn?
> > For /K/: I'm thinking either a double lambda (analogous to Welsh), or
> > lambda
> > with a reversed apostrophe above it, using the same convention as
aspirate
> > "rh" rho. Tau-lambda is another option, but misleadning.
> Tau-lambda would be my first choice; if I am not mistaken, the various
> accent marks and apostrophes would have been just coming into existance at
that
> point (or was it even later?) and in any case, probably would not have
been
> understood, let alone used, by most (literate) Byzantines.
Try lambda-chi
> > For /b/: double beta, for /v/, single beta. Or mu-pi for /b/, like
modern
> > Greek does. Or even add the Cyrillic.
> Another site confirmed mu-pi, so that takes care of /b/. Beta can
> represent /v/.
Certainly mu-pi is OK, but you can try double beta too IMHO.
> (And Cyrillic wasn't even invented at this point. Well, I guess
> Cyrill and his brother (M-something, too lazy to look him up) would have
been
> in Moldovia at this point, but still too early for Cyrillic proper.
His name is Methodius
> > For /S/: double sigma, sigma-kappa(-iota) (analogous to Italian), or use
> > the
> > Coptic or Cyrillic addition.
> Would a Coptic letter have been understood? I'm guessing probably not.
> Sigma-kappa is tempting, though.
Coptic is a bad choice. Try sigma-chi, if there's no such cluster, & if yes,
hyphenate the cluster.
> > For /ts/: tau-sigma. For /tS/... this one is a tough one, kappa-iota
maybe,
> > or tau-sigma-sigma (I hate trigraphs), or double kappa, or use the
Coptic
> > or
> > Cyrillic letter.
> Or maybe tau-sigma-kappa, analogous to the above? I don't mind
trigraphs,
> the purpose of this is just to give modern scholars a fairly good base to
> reconstruct Enamyn phonology. :)
The same. Tau-sigma for /ts/ is quite common, and /tS/ can be tau-sigma-chi
in analogy with sigma-chi for /S/.
> :Peter
Med lufe in Him,
Yitzik
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