Judeo-Latin (Ju:d,ajajt,) and Cedillarama, J-L alphabet

On Fri, 22 Jan 1999 14:44:25 -0500 John Cowan <cowan@...>
writes:
>Steg Belsky wrote:
>> [I] found the perfect letters for representing
>> "soft" D and T in Judeo-Latin ([z] and [s]) - a D and  T with
>cedillas!
>> I was amazed when i found them....does anyone know what language
>uses d,
>> and t,, and what sounds they represent?
>D WITH CEDILLA is in Unicode, but I have no information on what
>language uses it, if any.
>T WITH CEDILLA is a bogus character, really.  When the Latin-2
>character set (for Eastern European languages) was designed,
>the people who did it believed that Turkish S WITH CEDILLA and
>Romanian S WITH COMMA BELOW were really the same thing, and they
>included S WITH CEDILLA only.  Consequently, they put in the
>Romanian letter T WITH COMMA BELOW as T WITH CEDILLA, which Turkish
>doesn't have.  The Romanians have been protesting for years
>(mixed in with revolutions and economic disasters) and the next
>version of Unicode will finally have separate characters WITH
>COMMA BELOW for them.  Since nothing is ever removed from Unicode,
>the bogus T WITH CEDILLA will remain in place.  Feel free to use
>it however you want.
Ah, cool.  I feel so special, a Unicode character just for me! :)

>In Romanian, S WITH COMMA BELOW is /S/, and T WITH COMMA BELOW
>is [ts].
>> I also found a W with a ^,
>That's used in Welsh for [u:], because Welsh encodes [u] as "w", and
>circumflex is normal for vowel length.
>> However, now i'm thinking maybe i should
>> change the S's upside-down ^ into a normal ^, so that it'll match
>the W,
>> since i couldn't find a W with an upside-down one.
>As a practical matter, S WITH CIRCUMFLEX is used
>only in Esperanto, so fonts containing it aren't as generally
>available as S WITH CARON (the inverted ^), which is available
>in all Windows character sets.
Ah...but the thing is, i don't really *need* the diacritics in the
language itself, as far as i can tell....since [s] is a form of /t/, and
there is no /w/, {s} and {w} are free to be used for the fluctuating /S
Z/ and /f v/ allophones...so do you think i should use the diacritic'd
characters at all?
How about this idea?:
S = normal fluctuating /S/ /Z/ phoneme and /s/ in
loanwords/transliterations
S-caron = /S/ in loanwords, especially from Hebrew
S-circumflex = fluctuating /S/ /Z/ in words that include loaned /s/ or
/S/

W = normal fluctuating /f/ /v/ phoneme and /w/ in
loanwords/transliterations
W-circumflex = fluctuating phoneme in words that include loaned /w/

>--
>John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
>        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
>        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
>                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

I forgot to actually send this email, and only found it lying here in my
Outbox after i just spent the last while figuring out the entire
38-letter Juzajajs alphabet.  So, i'm adding it in here:

({:} = macron, {,} = cedilla, {^} = circumflex, {*} = caron)

A = /a/
A: = /a:/
B = /b B/ according to "beged-kefet" rules
C = /k x/ beged-kefet
C, = [x] marked beged-kefet fricative
D = /d z/ beged-kefet
D, = [z] marked b-k fricative
E = /E/
E: = /e/
F = /P f/ marked b-k and voiced/unvoiced specification, and loanwords
G = /g G/ b-k
G, = [G] marked b-k fricative
H = /h/
I = /I/
I: = /i/
J = /j/
K = /k/ loanwords, transliterations, etc.
L = /l/
M = /m/
N = /n/
O = /o/
O: = /ow/
P = /p P/ b-k
Q = /q/ loanwords, etc.
R = /r/
S = /S Z s/ see above
S^ = /S Z/ see above
S* = [S] see above, and voiced/unvoiced specification
T = /t s/ b-k
T, = [s] b-k fricative marking
U = /u/
U: = /uw/
V = /B v/ see {f}
W = /f v w/ see above
W^ = /f v/ see above
X = /H/
Y = [Z] specification, as opposed to {s*}
Z = /z/ loanwords, etc.

The voiced/unvoiced fluctuating letters of S and W work according to a
pattern of " [SaZaS] ".  The sound becomes voiced only when surrounded by
vowels and/or voiced consonants.

-Stephen (Steg)

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