Re: Tirehlat romanization

On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 11:29:54 +0200, BP Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

>     Consonants                                      post-
>                 bilabial    dental      alveolar    alveolar    velar
>     stop        p     b     t     d                             k     g
>     affricate                           c     j     ch    jh
>     nasal             m           n                             (mh)*
>     trill                               rh    r
>     fricative   f     v     th    dh    s     z     sh    zh    kh    gh
>     lat.  fric.                         lh    l
>
>Speaking in its favor is that +h could alternate with capitalization, which
>in turn might simplify the character layout in your Velika font: sounds
>which are mapped to letter+h in Romanization could be mapped to the
>corresponding UpperCase letter in the Velika font -- e.g. /ts/ is mapped to
>{c}, /tS/ is mapped to {C}; /K\/ is mapped to {l}, /K/ is mapped to {L}.
I currently have /ts/ mapped to {C} and /tS/ to {c}, /dz/ = {J}, /dZ/ =
{j}, but it could just as easily go the other way. It makes sense to have
all the post-alveolars mapped to capital letters. The only thing that
really bugs me about this romanization is {j} for /dz/.

>The /dz/ _j_ mapping was inspired by the philological Romanization of
>Armenian.  If you don't like it you may also use /dz/ _x_, /dZ/ _xh_ as in
>the Roman orthography of Albanian!
Using either {j} or {x} for /dz/ isn't the first thing that comes to mind,
and it would take some getting used to. Still, it has its advantages. When
I look at {suja} "poison" or {baja} "powder", it's obvious that both
syllables are short, open syllables. Whether or not that makes a difference
is another matter, but I've been considering the idea of slightly
lengthening vowels in open syllables. And it would also help to distinguish
between the /dz/ phoneme and sequences of /d/ + /z/ that might come up in
hypothetical compounds (hmm.... jadzin /dzad/+/zin/ = sulfur + iron =
pyrite?).

>     Vowels
>           front       central     back
>           i(í)  y(ý)              u(ú)
>
>           è(ê)        e(é)        o(ó)
>
>           a(á)
>
>This seems to me more elegant, since schwa being the less marked sound --
>essentially you have a bunch of vowels which are marked for
>frontness/backnes/roundedness and one which is just [+vowel]! -- should
>have the simpler grapheme.  Moreover the circumflex can be viewed as a
>combo of acute and grave, while no such obvious relationship exists between
>acute, dieresis and circumflex.
Hmm.... stressed /e/ and unstressed /@/ are about equally common, while
unstressed /e/ and stressed /@/ are rarer. I've been using the grave accent
to indicate secondary stress, but I've pretty much decided there isn't any
actual secondary stress in the language (there can be more than one
stressed syllable in a compound word, but either one can get the primary
stress).

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