Re: A BrSc a?

At 7:15 pm +0100 20/4/02, And Rosta wrote:
>The distinction between (b) & (c) seems -- to use your words! --
>overly nice.
Probably so.  I think (c) might be a permitted, tho not favored variant of (b).

>I prefer b to a.
Good - that's another vote for (b), and still none for (a).

>But without vowel harmony.
But both Dirk & I seem to like v.h.   :)

When I came across Turkish in my teens, I became fascinated with the
language and its vowel harmony; and I noticed even then that the vowels in
Turkish affixes need not written since they were entirely predictable from
the root word once you knew whether the suffixes used high or low vowels.
It occurred to me that this feature could be used to cut down on the need
for actually showing vowels in writing. Certainly since the 1970s at least,
vowel harmony has been a constant in all versions of BrSc.

Anyway, without the concern for vowel harmony, the question whether or not
[1] is OK becomes redundant.  One just has the 'classical 5 vowels' of
Esperanto, Ido, Novial etc etc.

>Instead, I would have
>CV syllables in the phonology, use the roman letters as an alphabet,
Those two features have been constants in all versions of BrSc since the
1960s   :)

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At 9:05 pm +0200 20/4/02, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>Alright Ray, I owe you some feedback.  ;-)
[snip]
>
>I find it hard to imagine any human language without a sound between
>/a/ and /A/. It's fundamentality makes it quite inevitable.
I'm fairly certain there are, in fact, some languages that do have a
four-vowel system like my 'scheme (a)' - but I admit that /a/-less
languages are uncommon.

In any case, I take this as yet another 'no' vote for (a)

[snip]

[1]
>
>I'm rather adverse to the sound myself, and I would expect it to
>cause much trouble for people who don't distinguish it in their
>natlangs.
But I don't think it's any more troublesome than Esperanto's /uj/, and that
didn't stop the language gaining some international following.

[snip]
>
>Maybe if you'd allow /M/ or even /y/ as allophones of /1/, you'd be
>on safer ground.  More people would be able to pronounce it, though
>it might become even harder for them to distinguish it in other
>people's talk.
Yes, I'd rather keep the vowel as central as possible, and allow [@] as a
permitted variant.

[snip]
>
>I find this scheme far preferable to the former two.  /@/ should be
>easier to learn for most people than /1/.
>
>If an IAL is indeed your goal, you could even allow /1/ as an allophone
>of /@/, thus uniting schemes (b) and (c).
Yep, or even allow [@] as an allophone of /1/   - see above (twice).

Thanks.

Ray.

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