Re: CHAT: Measurements (was: Re: CHAT: browsers)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>
> >
> > Still, there are outrageous spellings like _graentz_ /grans/ "mountain
> > range", where both the "e" and the "t" are silent without any
> > justification.
> >
>
>No worse than French "compte", where the "p" has been added only to make it
>look like Latin :)) (English "debt" is to put in the same boat :)) ).
Except that the Cyranians don't have the justification of imitating another
language.

The language-name "Cyran" is pretty bad too: the letter "c" is normally used
for /k/ before back vowels and before consonants, or as part of the digraph
"ch" representing /S/, whereas "y" can represent  either /y/ or /j/, so
one'd be forgiven to guess the word is to be pronounced /kjeran/ or similar.
It's /Syran/ - apparently the only word in the language where "c" on its own
indicates /S/.

> > What's truly bad about this orthography is that manages to cause
> > massive
> > ambiguity while mapping 22 phonemes onto 25 letters* plus a couple of
> > dozen
> > digraphs.
>
>Now that's indeed different from Maggel, which has probably something like
>90+
>phonemes for 17 letters (but dozens and dozens of digraphs :) ).
>
>  The really unforgiveable part is, of course, the
> > aforementioned
> > unsystematic indication of /e/. It doesn't even avoid identical
> > spellings
> > where it could; city name _Mrd_ /mr=d/ and _mrd_ /merede/ "rivercourse
> > in
> > delta".
> >
>
>LOL.
Irregularity just is so much more annoying when it's entirely unnecessary,
isn't it? Cyran orthography'd be better off if the letter "y" was abolished;
it normally indicates either /y/ or /j/, and thanks to flexible syllable
structure an unwritten "e"s you can far from always tell which. This despite
there being relatively unabiguous "ü" for /y/ and "j" for /j/ ("ü" is pretty
rare, and the only diacritic'd character you'll find).

> > There's random apostrophes thrown in too. Eg _M'cha_ /meSa/,
> > _Zzew'ten_
> > /sevten/.
> >
>
>The Star Trek effect? :)))
Something like that.

                                                             Andreas

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