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

On 21 May, Raymond Brown wrote:

> At 2:42 pm -0400 20/5/02, Jake X wrote:
> [snip]
>
> >>The idea of diacritics for something other than vowels interests me! I
> >>probably never would have thought of that on my own. Do any ('natural')
> >>systems use something like that?
<snip>

> 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/.
>
> I doubt that the above is exhaustive.

From a non-Latin-orthography point of view,
Hebrew also uses dots --- both over and inside
of letters.
    Over: one dot over the "shin/sin" (three pronged letter);
if it's over the letter on the right, it is pronounced  (in Israeli
Hebrew) [S], if on the left, it's [s]. There are letters
which take a dot inside the letter, but only 3 of them
(again, in Israeli Hebrew) make a difference in pronounciation:
a dot turns [v] to [b], [f] to [p] and [x] to [k].
    In Hebrew, orthography is based on a "need to know" :-)
system: ie vowels and dot-diacritics are usually dropped in
normal use (such as newspapers, etc.). They are put in
only where it is considered important not to guess at the
pronounciation (such as children's books).
    Hebrew also uses an acute mark to the left of certain
letters, turning [g] into [dZ], [z] into [Z] and [ts] into [tS].
These marks are usually never dropped, even in newpapers.


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.