Re: Consonant diacritics (was: Optimum number of symbols)

At 6:08 am +0000 22/5/02, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
[snip] But what
>>Zamenhof was doing, as we know, was simply inverting the kaczek use in
>>Czech, and that symbols was invented for conanants and has remained over
>>consonants ever since AFAIK.
>
>Well, that should be _hac^ek_, with the "c^" being an ASCII-friendly way of
>writing c-hac^ek, shouldn't it?
Oops, that was a typo.  I meant to write _haczek_, which is the Polish
spelling.  Yes, I know the Poles don't use the haczek as a diacritic, only
as a hook; but IMO it looks neater than _hac^ek_.

>>Turkish uses the breve above {g} to denote [G] or, before front vowels [j].
>
>Actually, nowadays the g-breve is normally silent, eg _mog^ul_ is pronounced
>[mo:ul], at least according to the Turks I've met.
Er, yes.
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At 8:47 am +0200 22/5/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
[snip]
>I've read a "Teach Yourself Turkish" which described g-breve as a mark of
>length of the preceeding vowel :)) . But I saw another one where it was
>described as silent in some cases and [j] in others.
In my "Turkish Self-Taught", it says of g-breve [I've used _g`_ for g-breve
as I can't find an ASCII remotely lokking like a breve]:
- This letter is always used in the middle or at the end of a word, never
at the beginning.
- It is a very soft semi-mute consonant as in the Turkish word _dag`_
(dugh).  [One is tempted to say "D'oh" - it's not exactly precise, but I
understood it to be a [G] well on it's way to becoming an approximant
rather than a true voiced fricative]
- In the middle of a word it is alomost lost in the throat, causing in the
meantime a pause on the preceeding vowel of the syllabl, when followed by a
cons. or vowel as in the words _sag`lam_ (sughlum), _ag`1l_ (ughi(r)l).  [1
is meant to be the undotted-i; and don't you just love the 'English
phonetic pronunciation' as the book calls those words it parenthesizes!!  I
take it too mean that the /G/ is virtually silent, causing the preceeding
vowel to lengthen in compensation.
- If following the consonant _n_ (as in _sang`at_) the pronunciation is
stronger, almost as if written "sunghut". [My interpretation: after /n/ it
retains the sound [G] ]
- Getting lost in the throat, causing the same pause on the preceedibg
vowel, but merging into the succeeding vowel sound by way of changing into
that vowel, or a _y_, when followed by a soft vowel, as in the Turkish
words _yig`irmi_, _gög`üs_ which are pronounced: yiyirmi, göyüs.  [i.e. /G/
is pronounced [j] before front vowels]

The vowels in _göyüs_ will inevitably get corrupted by some mailers; the
first vowel is o-trema  ("o-umlaut"/ "o-diaeresis") and the second u-trema.

Ray.


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Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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