Re: Is Microsoft conquering the world?! (Re: Orthographies with lotsa diacritics)

From: "daniel andreasson" <daniel.andreasson@...>

> Marcus Smith wrote:
> > Three vowels: a, i, o. Each one can be phonemically short, long or
> > nasal. (Schwa is short a, written with upsilon; long i is sometimes
> > written with <e>).
>
> I read in Pam Munro's article that traditionally short o's often were
> represented by <u>.
I see a pattern here.  Let's set aside the nasals and the v-vowel thing.  You
have three long and three short, and they form a rough triangle.  Farsi does the
same thing with Arabic loans.  Arabic short vowels (i a u) become Farsi /e/ /æ/
(that should be ash) /o/, while long (i a u) become /i/ /å/ (that should be
inverted script a; I just cheated and used a-ring) /u/.

So using <i> for long <e> and <u> for long <o>, or vice versa if more
appropriate, would work for Choctaw and Chickasaw, while <aa> would be easiest
for long <a> (or a-circumflex, or a-ring).

(By the way, the native word for Choctaw is Chahta, stress on the final a.)

DaW,