Re: Revised Zharranh page

At 03:35 9.2.2004, Herman Miller wrote:
>Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>At 05:50 8.2.2004, Herman Miller wrote:
>>
>>>For [j\], I'm using j-circumflex, firstly
>>>because there isn't a precomposed z-comma, and secondly because it
>>>doesn't sound like any kind of z at all.
>>
>>
>>I haven't been able to look at your page yet
>>(we use dial-up connexion and my stepson is on
>>the phone with his girlfriend) but...
>>
>>It would of course be possible to use plain _j_ for /j\/
>>and _y_ for /j/.  Then there is the True Yogh (U+021D,
>>U+021C) which IMHO is an ultracool candidate for /j\/.
>
>Before I had "yogh wedge" (Pullum & Ladusaw's name for what Unicode
>calls "ezh with caron") assigned to /dZ/, I was using "j", which meant
>that I needed some other variation of "j" for /j\/. I've thought about
>keeping "j" = /dZ/ for languages like Tilya, which otherwise don't need
>any letters out of the ordinary fonts, but if I can find a fixed-space
>font that includes "yogh wedge" (I already have a couple of proportional
>fonts), I think your suggestion makes sense.
Do you know of any fixed-width fonts that contain Latin Extended and IPA?
I only have MS Mincho, which is dead ugly!


>As far as the actual yogh character, I'm tentatively thinking of using
>it for glottal stops, mainly because reversed yogh is the obvious choice
>for /?\/, and /?/ looks like the reverse of /?\/. Plus, it's the only
>thing that has both a capital and lower case form that looks much like a
>glottal stop symbol.
You could also do what Semiticists have done for centuries,
viz. use the 'right half ring' U+02BE and capitalize the
following vowel.  Not worse than what Arabic actually does
with Hamza!  IMHO the best shape for an uppercase GS would
be a mirror-image capital Greek Gamma.

I've looked at your page now (as much as it was on-screen readable
with Gentium -- how come Acrobat Reader renders unhinted fonts so
much better than MSIE?) and it looks OK except for three things:
(1) the comma below consonants for palatals.  I for one keep
seeing 'retroflex' dots, no doubt conditioned by the standard
Indologist transliteration practice.  I suggest acute above as a
palatalization diacritic -- _t' d' s' z'_ etc. for alveopalatal
and _k' g' x'_ etc. for mediopalatal.  For letters with ascenders
I use the Greek number sign U+0374 after the letter, since it IMO
spaces better -- is more narrow -- than spacing acute in Gentium,
which is the font I prefer for this kind of thing.
(2) Mutatis mutandis the use of IPA retroflex letters.  Mostly because
_t_ and _t`_ are dead hard to keep separate in handwriting (in fact
most IPA characters are troublesome in handwriting!) I prefer the underdot.
Also the IPA letters have no uppercase.
(3) The dental stops.  You wrote:
>I'm using t with stroke and d with stroke for the dental stops, but
>since [T] and [D] are allophones of these phonemes, I could just as
>easily have spelled them "th" and "dh". Are there any languages that
>have /t_d/ and /T/, or /d_d/ and /D/, as distinct phonemes, and still
>need to distinguish them from the alveolar stops /t_-/ and /d_-/? I'm
>thinking that I might as well use "th" and "dh" for dental stops
>whenever they're distinct from alveolar stops.
I of course prefer thorn and eth any day of the year.  The Saami t/d
with stroke certainly made sense when haviing to make do with
mainland Nordic typewriters, but I hope (probably in vain) that they
will switch over to proper thorn/eth.  For dental stops/nasals etc.
I think the IPA bridge below or IMHO even better the Americanist
inverted breve below makes excellent sense -- again thinking of
handwriting convenience.  FWIW Dravidianists use a macron below to
distinguish alveolars from dentals, {_r} (essentially = [4]
being the only such character to occur with any frequency.

Also I have as I said no fixed width font appropriate for seeing
most estended characters.  I guess I'm not the only one...

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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