Re: simple phonology

On Jan 2, 2005, at 8:48 AM, Philip Newton wrote:
>> I've heard about languages with only 4 wovels (nahuatl?)
> Arabic has only three distinctive vowels, as far as I know. (This is
> one reason why I consider it rather a pain to write non-Arabic
> languages in the Arabic writing system.)
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> Watch the Reply-To!

Arabic has six:
/a/ /i/ /u/
/a:/ /i:/ /u:/
Each vowel has a wide variety of realizations, depending on the
surrounding consonants.

I've been working on an Arabic orthography for English that makes use
of Arabic emphatic and non-emphatic consonants in order to mark the
vowels as different English vowels.
For example:
( />/ = emphatic)

|bat| = /bEt/ "bet"
|bat>| = /bVt/ "butt"
|ba:t| = /b&t/ "bat"
|ba:t>| = /bat/ "bot"

When none of the necessary consonants have an emphatic equivalent, I
just throw in an |`ayn| /3/ instead.


-Stephen (Steg)
  "bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies!"
      ~ buffy the vampire slayer musical episode