Re: Some problems with the phonology and orthogra

At 12:22 pm -0800 30/10/98, charles wrote:
>On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
>
>> Ray wrote :
>>
>> > The problem it seems to me is that we need 8 vowel symbols & the Romans
>> > bequeathed us only 6: a,e,i,o,u,y.  (As you know, was used only as a vowel
>> > by the Romans.)
>> >
>> > We need two other symbols;
>
>> Why did Latin only bequeath those miserable 6 vowels ?
>> Wasn't it just to emmerde future conlangers ?
Probablement - I guess they thought that having bequeathed Latin to the
world, no conlang would ever be needed  :)

>Their nastiest trick was to eliminate K and confuse C.
Yes, tho they never quite eliminated K - it still occasionally occurred
before A.  But we have the Etruscans to partly blame for that confusion  :)

>> I agree with 'w' to balance 'y'.
>> But why not nice accents on vowels,
Nice accents are OK - but Philip wanted to keep within the standard (i.e. 7
bit) ASCII range.  As we know on this list, accents and other diacritics
unfortunately do not always travel well.  For example: a c e g k n q x y

>Better to digraph them, I think; OE and AE and ...
Possible - but Philip said he was loath to use two letters for single sounds.

>
>> Or wait for Windows 2XXX :-)
>
>Godot never does arrive.
But Macs have been able to handle all these diacritics for decades  ;-)

Ray.