Re: CONLANG Digest - 15 May 2000 to 16 May 2000 (#2000-134)

Grr, my netscape crashed when I was replying to this.  Second time
around.

> Has _no_ modern language ever done it?
Yes, when there's been an official organization to declare correct
usages, like the French Academy, which when founded, changed something
like 25% of French spellings, especially replacing vowel-s with
vowel-circumflex.

> Besides, all the people who were raised on the old spelling won't last
> forever anyway.  >;p
But they're the ones that have to accept it.

> Yes, but there I mean the -i isn't /aj/ !  You're right that the -land part
> doesn't match though.
But it's bimorphemic anyways.

> I don't think it's an irregularity if it has the same vowel as other -ila-
> words.   Considering that both phil- and -andr- aren't exactly English words
> either....
But phil- (or rather -phile) is a fairly productive affix.

> But in _none_ of them is the i /aj/ !  (If anything, the i is silent and the
> l is syllabic.)
AND UNSTRESSED!  When unstressed, a lot of vowels collapse into /@/.

> What I'm saying is I don't see how "iland" for "island" would be read with
> long I when the regular formation is for 'ila' to have a short (or
> schwa-ized, ok) I instead.
But I (and I suspect most others) would think of other examples of
i-consonant-vowel, like, e.g., "pilot" and assume /aj/.  Besides, it
would be an improvement over "island", which looks like it should start
with /ajs/ or /Is/.  Indeed, I had a hispanic friend who always said
/ajsl@nd/ for it, based on the spelling.

> Are there _any_ -ila- words with long I?
Dilate, bilateral.

> Yes, {c} is my conlanger's prettier-to-look-at-than-k /k/.
Myself, I've always preferred <k> for /k/.  <c> looks too much like <tS>
to me.

> /r\/ is "American r", as I've heard it called.
American r is retroflex, pronounced by curling the front of the tongue
backwards, that's represented in SAMPA by /r\`/.  /r\/ is an alveolar
approximate, which exists in some British dialects, but I don't know of
it existing in America.

> /r/ by itself is apparently supposed to be something more like Spanish
> /r/.
A trill, Spanish <rr>.

> I'm not familiar with /Zj/ (at least I'm not familiar with being familiar
> with it...) and I think I would have some trouble with it.
Yeah, I find it kinda tough.

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