Re: Russian letter names was Re: Words about Conscripts

on interesting letter names :

well, greek may be held up as having interesting
names, but it's a bit patchy. the classical alphabet
was :

alpha be:ta gamma delta ( interesting and semitic so
far ) ei ( eh ! ) [wau/digamma] ze:ta he:ta the:ta (
eh oop ? ) iota kappa labda ( that's more like it )
mou nou xei ou pei ( or maybe not ) [koppa] rho sigma
tau hu phei khei psei o: [ho:s an pi/sampi/...]

on alphabet reciting :

never really did those little songs, so i usually
think of it either as (| is a bar line )

4/8 abcd|efgh|ijkl|mnop|qrst|uv . . . oops !
3/8 abc|def|ghi|jkl|mno|pqr|stu|vw|xyz
    where 3/8 vw| is a quaver, two semis and a quaver

the advantage of the second is it works as well
backwards :

3/8 zyx|wv|uts|rqp|onm|lkj|ihg|fed|cba

and when i was little my alphabet was phonetic:

'& b@ k@ d@ 'E f@ g@ h@ 'I dZ@ k@ l@ 'm@ n@ O p@ 'kw@
r\@ s@ t@ 'V v@ w@ ks@ 'j@ z@ _ _ ( and i know k@ and
k@ are the same ! )

my favourite is i think the arabic alphabet, as it
falls into four neat groups of seven

alif baa taa thaa jiim haa hhaa
daal dhaal raa zaai siin shiin sood
too doo zoo 'ain ghain faa kaaf
qoof leem miim nuun haa wau yaa

i suppose you could do that to twinkle twinkle as well
. . .

grammatical terms in bac ( eestaak has no meanings
yet, so i can't give anything there ) :

- a dictionary or wordlist would be a |bacc| /bat:S/ (
concatenation of voices/words ) or a |tapittotabac|
/'tapIt:OtabatS/ ( word book )
- a grammar would be a |tapittotabarc|
/'tapitottaba4tS/ ( how you speak book )

- a noun would be a |bacapre| ['batSap4E] ( word for a
thing which exists )
- a verb would be a |bacaperr| ['batSapEr] ( word for
a way of being
- the topic ( subject ) of a clase would be a
|bacacra| ['batSatS4a] ( word for an agent )
- an abstract noun would be a |bacagap| ['batSagap] (
word for a thought content )

all could be abbreviated by omitting |baca|

conscripts :

1. bac

the bac alphabet is currently very boring : a i[I]
u[U] e[E] o[O] ka ga ca[tSa] ja[dZa] ta da pa ba
ya[ja]/ay[aI] ra[4a] la wa/aw[aU] sa tna[na]/an[a~]
tha[Ta]/ah[a:]

the pairs are used when the second member is used in
digraphs with a vowel ( the first is a simple
consonant in the case of y and w and a consonant
digraph letter with n and h )

bahret would be spelt [ba a Ta 4a E ta]
bnathyuw would be spelt [ba na a ta Ta ya U wa]

bac writing has two punctuation marks ( nicked partly
from nagari, and partly from the use of the virgule in
early english writings ). they look in the script like
'|' and '||', and i transcribe them as either '/' and
'//' or , and '.'. names will probably be |taw|
[taw]/[taU] 'trunk' and |tawek| ['tawEk] 'two trunks'

2. eestaak

the eestaak syllabary is currently being worked on.
i'm not sure whether the symbols will have names or
just sounds. they do look like things, so i might give
them names starting with the syllable they describe

i'll also have to have names for the two diacritic
marks ( which i transcribe as ` and °, becuase that's
what they look like ). i suspect their names will come
from the words for 'throat' and 'nose'. as the first
causes 'swallowing' of the previous consonant, and the
second nasalisation.

i'm not clear yet on punctuation. i might separate
words with a colon ':' ( like in amharic ), which
could lead to clauses being separated with a double
colon '::', and sentences with five dots :·:. then
again i might use something rather like a primary
school division sign '÷'

anyway, been typing far too long . . . will be back !

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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