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

 --- Raymond Brown wrote:

> Yes, but Esperanto is hardly a 'natural language'.  The idea of sticking a
> circumflex over a consonant has always seemed weird to me - but that's
> probably because I'm only too aware of the origin of the symbol.  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.
Maybe because in those days people used to write on a typewriter? I learnt
typing on a typewriter with a circonflexe but without a haczek, at least...

> Turkish uses the breve above {g} to denote [G] or, before front vowels [j].
Yeah, and another neat feature of Turkish is that they do exactly the opposite,
by removing the dot from "i"!

> The dot is used above consonants:
> (a) in traditional Irish to denote soft mutation (normally respelled as
> consonant+h in the modern Roman script), i.e. on plosives to denote a
> fricative value, and on {s} to denote [h].
> (c) in Maltese, e.g. dotted-c = /tS/; dotted-g = /dZ/ ~ undotted-g = /g/;
> dotted-z = /z/ ~ undotted-z = /ts/.
Don't forget Polish z-with-dot [Z].

Jan

=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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