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

From:Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
Date:Friday, May 24, 2002, 6:16
 --- 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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com