Re: Q & X

Tero Vilkesalo sikayal:

> Hi to all!
Hi!

>
> I am new on the list. I followed your discussion here a little in the summer
> and then again in december. This really is a most interesting forum!
I definitely think so.  Or else I would still be here.

> BTW, has anybody of you changed your surname and invented the new name
> yourself? I have. However, the reason was simple: I wasn't really grown up
> to my former surname, which was Kukkonen. Kukko means 'rooster' or 'cock'
> (only the animal!!) in Finnish. -nen is the a very common ending in
> surnames. My new surname, Vilkesalo, is purely Finnish as well, just like my
> roots. I did have a thought of how foreign people would pronounce it. This
> surname really didn't seem too difficult. Or what do you say?
"Vilkesalo" is much more euphonic than Kukkonen, IMHO, and not difficult
to pronounce.  My last name, "Bangs" has never been disliked enough to
change, but I write under a pseudonym most of the time.

> And now to a real question. Which sounds do you write with the letter Q or X
> in your a priori conlangs with Latin alphabet? What different sounds do they
> reflect in those languages of the world that use Latin alphabet? (What is Q
> in Greenlandic???)
Probably [q], if that tell you anything ;-).  It's a uvular sound made at
the very back of the throat, resembling a throaty "k".  It's made with the
tongue against the uvula (that dangly thing in the back of your throat).

> Q and X seem to me as some unused corners of the keyboard. We never use them
> in Finnish, you know. We have ks for the x sound. It would be most
> unattractive for me to use them in their historical ways. So in one of my
> sketches Q was used for the deep throat sound, which is J in Spanish. (J
> was, of course, used for something else.) X was used for the sh-sound. (I'm
> not familiar with the correct marks yet...) I know this is used in Catalan
> and somewhere in Latin America at least. The reason? Convenience.
> Furthermore, they look neater than those kh and sh. (Kh weirdly always
> brings to my mind Tolkien's orc language...)
I've never seen {q} for [x] (the Spanish sound) but it seems
reasonable.  I've seen more unrealistic things, like using {q} for [T],
the sound in English "think"!  Using {x} for [S] (the sh-sound) is very
reasonable, was actually used such in archaic Spanish.  As for me
personally, I don't use {q} and {x} at all in my conlangs, just as a
matter of taste.

> Happy to enter this community of language freaks. : )
Happy to have you here!

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_