Re: Tsuhon: tentative phonology

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Thu, 3 May 2001 16:43:05 -0400 Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> writes:
> > Well, some people hate the sound of Korean.  :-p  The Chevraqis
> > character
> > system is written vertically, but its consonant-forms crib off
> > Korean's,
> > because in its conculture the Chevraqen alphabet was devised by a
> > magistrate-scholar-linguist-wannabe (as opposed to
> > king-scholar-linguist).  I figured Korean's so obscure anyway, it
> > doesn't
> > hurt anything, and it might amuse other Koreans.
>
> The Gabwe character system was also intentionally based off of Korean.  I
> originally wanted to just use Korean, but the sounds didn't match up so i
> ended up sort of making my own symbols based on them.  Also, Gabwe is
> written horizontally (although vertically is usable for decoration), and
> because of the morphemes' phonotactics(?) each syllable-form can have one
> of various forms:
Cool.  :-)  Korean can be written vertically or horizontally (and
regularly *is,* though the modern tendency seems to be horizontal--the
influence of English?).

Because of the way sounds are arranged in Chevraqis, sometimes
ending-forms are mirror-images.  They're just easier to squeeze in.  :-p

> 1. single symbol
> 2. two symbols, arranged vertically
> 3. three symbols, arranged vertically
> 4. four symbols CCVC
> 5. four symbols CVCC
> 6. five symbols CCVCC
>
> Whenever there's a CC sequence in a syllable, they're written
> horizontally next to eachother in the row that would have taken up one C.
>
> I don't think Korean is organized in the same way... is it?
Not really, no; you can't have a single symbol in isolation, since even
if the syllable is just a vowel, you have to have a placeholder "circle"
in the consonant-position.  Also, "tensified" consonants are written as
double versions of the unaspirated consonants, which I find intuitive
though they're not "two consonants together," really.  You *can* have two
ending-consonants in a Korean syllable, but usually either one isn't
pronounced, or one gets elision'd? over to affect the next syllable instead.

I'd love to see a writing sample, if you have one up on the web or as a
JPG or GIF file.  (Possibly I've seen Gabwe before, but I'm bad at
keeping track.  <humbly abasing herself>)

YHL