Re: Tirehlat romanization

It recently occurred to me that the Hungarian digraph system is a good deal
more systematic than the Polish one, despite the superficial similarity.

Given the values of the single graphemes:

_c_ /ts/ -- voiceless alveolar affricate
_s_ /S/  -- voiceless palatoalveolar fricative
_z_ /z/  -- voiced alveolar fricative

Then in the digraphs:

_cs_ /tS/ -- voiceless palatoalveolar fricative
_sz_ /s/  -- voiceless alveolar fricative
_zs_ /Z/  -- voiced palatoalveolar fricative

in each digraph the first letter designates the manner and the second
letter the place of articulation!  This is probably more by accident than
by design -- Middle High German _s_ was closer to /S/ than to /s/ -- but
neat nonetheless!

Now imagine expanding this system to dentalveolar fricatives and stops:

_t_  /t/
_d_  /D/
_dt_ /d/
_td_ /T/

The beauty of these digraphs is really that they are virtually impossible
to pronounce as sequences of the values of their component letters!

/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
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