Re: Dropping Q and C (was: Some isolating verb patterns)

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 12:48 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]
>> And |q| is another of those pesky letters that are not really needed in
>> the modern Roman alphabet, and it tends to be put to other uses in
>> natlangs, for example: [q] (Innuit), [c] (Albanian), [?] (Maltese), [ts\
>> _h]
>>   (Pinyin), [!\] (Zulu and Xhosa) inter_alia. Even the |qu| combo is not
>> the same everywhere: it may be /kw/, /kP/, /kv/ or just plain /k/.
>
> Or even [ts\_hw] in Pinyin.
Well, [ts\_hH] in fact - but that doesn't really count. What I meant with
|qu| was the Latin use of the combo as an *invariant consonant combo*. In
Pinyin, |q| is a consonant in its own right - it does require a following
|u|. In a word like _quan2_ (completely), the [H] is an allophone of /y/.

One could multiply the examples of |qu| from some of the other languages
where |q| has its many different pronunciations.

>
>> In conlangs it is often used to denote [N], but I know of no natlang that
>> does this.
>
> I believe Fijian has 'q'=[Ng].
Yep - but [Ng] is not the same as just plain [N]     :)

I had forgotten Fijian. I should have added [Ng] to the list of other
natlang 'other uses' above. I still do not know a natlang that uses it
just for [N].

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On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 06:51 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:44:33 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
> wrote:
> [snip]
>> While I can readily think of examples of conlangs that use |c| = /k/ -
>> for
>> example Quenya and Sindarin (tho Quenya follows Latin in having /kw/
>> spelled |qu| and not |cw|)
>
> Interestingly enough, Vietnamese does this, too -- though I'm not sure
> whether |qu| replaces *|ku| or *|cu| since apparently both |k| and |c|
> occur.
>
> But I found it amusing that |q| exists in the language, if only in the
> sequence |qu|.
Yes - Vietnamese spelling is essentially based on Portuguese nd was
developed by the early Portuguese missionaries to the area.

>> And |q| is another of those pesky letters that are not really needed in
>> the modern Roman alphabet, and it tends to be put to other uses in
>> natlangs, for example: [q] (Innuit), [c] (Albanian), [?] (Maltese), [ts\
>> _h]
>>   (Pinyin), [!\] (Zulu and Xhosa) inter_alia.
>
> Though for Maltese, it's not necessarily "put to other uses" -- from
> what I've read, [?] is a development of Arabic /q/, and the
> pronunciation [?] for /q/ is used in some other dialects/descendants
> of Arabic as well, so using the letter |q| for what might be called
> /q/ phonemically makes some sense -- it appears not to be completely
> arbitrary.
This is quite correct - but from the point of view of the _Roman_ alphabet,
  it is being put to another use. It is true that Q is ultimately derived
from Phoenician _qo:f_ which represented /q/; but ever since the Greeks
'borrowed' the Phoenician alphabet in the 8th cent BCE, it denoted the
sound /k/ before back vowels. The Greeks eventually dropped that pactice,
using K only for /k/, but they kept Q as the symbol for 90. The Etruscans,
  however, preserved the older Greek use and passed it on to the Romans.
The latter gave Q a new use: to show that a following V (u) was a
consonant and not a vowel.

I am not sure when |q| was adopted for transcribing Arabic /q/, whether it
only dates back to the last century or whether it had been adopted in the
19th century. It was of course due to scholars' realizing the ultimate
origin of Q; so in the practice of transcribing Arabic and Inuit /q/ as |q|
  is I suppose putting Q back to its original pre-Roman and pre-Greek use
:)

I agree entirely the Maltese use is less arbitrary than some of the other
uses.

[snip]
>
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:48:42 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> wrote:
[snip]
>> I believe Fijian has 'q'=[Ng].
>
> I believe this is correct.
it is correct.

> Along with |b| = [mb] and |d| = [nd], IIRC. (|g| is used for [N] and
> hence isn't available for [Ng].) And |c| for [D]!
Your memory is spot on! I should have added /D/ to the list of sounds that
natlangs represent with |c| besides the original /k/ (also /g/ in early
Latin spelling). I now make that list:
[c], [s], [ts], [tS], [dZ], [T], [D], [|\]

Any others in natlangs?

It is also used in quite a few conlangs as [S], but I do not know of any
natlangs that do that.

Ray
=======================================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
=======================================================
"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"

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