Re: Silent E

Colin Halverson wrote:
>
> Do any other languages (I am sure there are at least a few) have a silent
>letter or especially a silent modifying letter (as in English "ate", the e is
>silent and makes the a long)???  Where does this come from??  Do any of ur conlangs have this??
>
Mongolian has a silent vowel at the end of many words when written in
cyrillic. It indicates that the "n" character (looks like an english H)
is pronounced /n/ rather than /N/. The vowel so used is determined by
vowel harmony. Also, a silent back vowel is written at the ends of words
to change a final "g" character (looks like greek gamma) from /g/ to
/voiced uvular stop/ (does not have a transcription on my SAMPA chart?).

These are the result of the switch to cyrillic writing under the
communists when, as my mongolian teacher put it, the Russians destroyed
his beautiful language.

So far I have tried to keep the transcription of my conlangs as regular
as possible to reduce difficulties. I intend to develop native wrting
systems for them at some point, at which time interesting irregularities
might develop.

David STokes