Re: mu for [N] (was: Koryak Vowel harmony)

Hi!

Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> writes:
> On Jan 21, 2005, at 1:02 AM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> >> Any good suggestion for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative? :-)
> > [In ISO-8859-1]
>
> > How about |¿|?  It makes more sense for the voiced one than the
> > voiceless one, given the IPA, but if you don't have the voiceless one,
> > it
> > seems fairly reasonable.  I think |£| and |þ| both bear a slight
> > resemblance
> > to the IPA barred-h.  Using |¼| is probably too weird, but maybe |×|
> > (due to its similarity to |x| or ³ (similar to Arabic 'ayin)) . ..
> > -Marcos
>
> Noooooo, you can't represent _Haa_/_hhet_ using a _`ay(i)n_-looking
> symbol!!!  That's just *wrong*! :-P
> I use |hh| myself, usually.
> |x| could work, if it's not already taken for /x/.
> If you're not adverse to using numbers, Arabic-speakers commonly use
> |7| to transliterate it.
> Other possible symbols:
> |#| (looks like barred-H)
> |q| it's back-of-the-mouth-y
> |j| like Spanish /x/~/X/, just a little more back.
So many suggestions! :-)

First of all, I don't like using non-letter symbols for phonemes
because I don't like the look of words with symbols.  They have no
upper case (|µ| also doesn't, hmm...) and they seem to -- hmmm --
destroy the look of words.  Very subjective thingy, of course.  I even
do not like apostrophes inside words.

Further, |x|, |q| and |þ| are occupied for /x/, /q/ and /T/, resp.  I
especially like the look of |qþ|.  It's just a wonderful finding! :-)
The capital version |Qþ| destroys the niceness a bit, however.

OE lig is indeed interesting, but maybe too weird for /X\/.

I'll experiment with |j|, however, although I keep on mispronouncing
it.  Same with |y|.

BTW, I use |r| for /X/, borrowing from Kalaallisut, German and French
(in Greenlandic, it's /R/, but it's not a rhotic as in German for
French, but phonemically corresponds to fricativized /q/).  I like
the look of the two clusters |tr| and |qr| with |r|.

Currently unoccupied letters:
  labials: |b|, |p|, |m|, |f|, |v|, |w|
  other:   |j|, |l|, |c|, |y|, |z|

More problems: vowels & tones: since the language has tones, which I
*must* (:-)) represent with diacritics in order to avoid symbols (and
I don't like letters for tones either), I have problems due to the
existence of a schwa: there is a nice unicode letter for it, but my
browser fails to compose schwas with acute or grave accent.  So I
used |e|.  However, uvulars and pharyngeals shift the articulation
of /i/ to [e], and I want to represent this orthographically, too.
*Sigh*

Maybe I should get a new Linux distro, new browsers, everything new
for my Laptop.  I just don't exactly feel like a sysadmin right
now. :-/

**Henrik

BTW: My Lisp grammar can now handle sandhi rule!  Yesterday, I could
     watch the first magic hybrid phonemes in action.
     I will probably post some tables soon.

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