Re: What is an alphabet? Re: Optimum number of symbols

Raymond Brown scripsit:

> I believe other instances of single letters
> with diphthongal value do occur outside of English, but none come to mind
> immediately, unless one counts the [ja] & [ju] of Cyrillic.
Icelandic.

> I once played around with using Cyrillic letters for Chinese and using the
> 'hard' and 'soft' signs (and inventing two more similar ones) to denotes
> tones.  I put the tone symbols between the initial consonant and the rhyme
> (I don't remember exactly what happened to syllables with no initial
> consonant).
The romanization of Zhuang (a Tai language of China) is interesting in
this respect.  Standard Zhuang has six tones, which are written using
special tonal letters.  AFAICT tone 1 has no special letter.
Tone 2 is written with a reversed s, tone 3 with Cyrillic ZHE, tone 4
with Cyrillic CHE, tone 5 with a sort of Gaelic-style G, and tone 6
with a Cyrillic hard sign.  If you squint at these, they look like the
digits 2-6 respectively.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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