Re: xsampa for vowels and diphthongs

On Thursday 13 March 2003 02:14 am, Tristan wrote:
> Isaac Penzev wrote:
> > Ktabta Elyse Grasso:
> >
>
> > My comment here is not on shmampa, but on spelling. When you *write*
words
> > by hand, |ii| and |ü|/|u"| will be definitely confused. It's almost
a no-no
> > in alphabet designing to have them both at one time, AFAIK.
>
> Maybe the Is would develop dotlessly. But then you have the problem
with
> ii and u. So handwritten Us would like similar to the way I was taught
> handwritten Vs (i.e. exactly the same except that in a u, you go down
> and connect to the next letter from the bottom, whereas in a v, you
> connect it the top). Vs and Us are much more interchangeable,
generally.
> Or W could be used for /v/. For /w/, should the phoneme exist, either
> the V/U letter could be used, or we could use the wynn. I prefer the
> latter. Wynn and P would then be somewhat similar, but bilabial stops
> aren't used (much?), so that isn't much of an issue. If you wanted, I
> could continue shuffling the sounds along, though, until eventually,
> though the alphabet started off as normal Roman writing, it became
> something extraordinarily odd (I feel a change to the Wydse
orthography
> coming on).
>
> Anyway, given we don't have any creatures on Earth with stingers and
> language, I doubt these characters even know of the Latin alphabet. (I
> may've missed something though.)
>
> Tristan.
>
Shayanans have liquids and trills and fricatives and affricates all over
the place (and very few stops). W,y,v and j are all in use as
consonants.
unvoiced stops t k
voiced stops   d g
unvoiced fricatives f th s sh h
voiced fricatives   v dh z zh x
affricates ch j tth dth ts dz (kh and gx rare, phonemic in loan words)
drones     n nn ng (m in loan words is labiodental affricate: mf)
trills     ll rr tl dl kl gk (hr and wl phonemic in rare loan words)
approximants r l w y

I'm not entirely sure why it's dth instead of ddh, it just is. My chief
informant's name is Nitodthii, and the syllables are Ni-todth-ii and
the voice-to-unvoiced shift happens (unless people are being very
sloppy). Stress on the second syllable.

--
Elyse Grasso

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