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Re: The romamization of a complex tone system

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 19, 2002, 8:22
En réponse à Jesse Raccio <jraja0722@...>:

> Hi all, > > I'm a new member here so I will start with an > introduction.
Welcome to the list!
> I would think that the above would simply get annoying > and confusing. > I am creating an alphabet with the Hebrew torah trope > system in > mind.
What's this system? Never heard of it... But for someone checking the lang out casually,
> I cannot > expect them to care about an alphabet system too much. > > So if anyone has any suggestions, or could point out > something I've > missed, thanks. > J. >
Well, the real problem is that the Roman alphabet is absolutely not suited for something more complicated than Spanish :)) . Especially, as soon as you get complex tone patterns or sounds unknown to European languages, the Roman alphabet ceases to be useful. You could use a bunch of diacritics, dots, accents, etc..., but you couldn't represent it in HTML and even less in ASCII. And even by making PDFs you would get problems... You arrive here at one limit of the Roman alphabet, to which there's not much of a solution, except inventing new characters that you won't be able to represent on a computer except by making a new font. So I think your idea to make an alphabet is the best. You'll need a Roman transliteration though, but since it will only be a transliteration it doesn't need to be beautiful, only useful... And then, whether using number, non-letter characters or whatever won't change much anything... Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies

Jesse Raccio <jraja0722@...>
Jesse Raccio <jraja0722@...>