Re: CHAT: weird names

On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Irina Rempt-Drijfhout wrote:

> I tried to do a more scholarly transcription - 'k' for /k/ - but it
> looked very wrong to me, as if Valdyan was suddenly an ugly guttural
> language.
>
        For me, the problem with using <c> for /k/ is this: <k> only
intuitively works with the sound /k/, while <c> can work for any number
of different sounds (e.g., /tS/, /ts/, /s/, /S/, and of course /c/).  So
when using ASCII (especially 7-bit), which has a very limited number of
symbols, it seems sensible to let <c> roam around where it will and
keep <k> in the only place where it makes sense.  There's also the
problem of (English-speaking, at least) people constantly pronouncing
<c> as /s/ before <e> or <i> (something that bothered Tolkien a lot in
his Quenya transcription).
        Then again, if your language doesn't have any sounds that go
with <c> either (like most of my conlangs), this isn't as much an issue.
It's even less an issue if you're transcribing from a native script.

> I also went from 'j' to 'y' for /j/, but it's now firmly back at 'j'.
>
        I'm beginning to favour <j> for /j/ as well -- mostly because it
frees up <y> to represent a vowel.  In Doraya, <j> represents both /j/
and /I/, which makes words that begin with a /jI/ very ugly, such as in
the word _yyl_ 'ugly' :) I'd like to change it so that <j> represents
/j/, but "Doraja" just doesn't look right to me . . .

Later,
Adam
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