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Re: USAGE: No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong)

From:Dana Nutter <sasxsek@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 30, 2006, 12:58
li [Philip Newton] mi tulis la

> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:18 > To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu > Subject: Re: No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong) > > > On 5/29/06, Dana Nutter <d_n@...> wrote: > > li [veritosproject@GMAIL.COM] mi tulis la > > > > > [x] _Esperanto!_ j/k > > > > I overlooked that one in my post. Though it is phonemic, > the diacritics > > need to go. I prefer the <cx gx hx jx sx w> system, but > would rather > > see something that doesn't need digraphs either. > > Er, you have the problem that Esperanto has more phonemes than there > are letters in the Latin alphabet. Thus, you need to extend the > alphabet -- and diacritics and digraphs are two popular ways to do so. > If you eliminate those, what else is left? (I suppose you could press > into service letters such as <q w x y> which aren't currently used, > but only a Pinyin-reader could love that...) > > _If_ you don't want extra letters, a better way is to reduce the > number of phonemes. As several of the Esperanto reforms did :) > > For example, Ido got rid of <hx gx> (the first is pretty marginal in > Esperanto anyway, and is often replaced by <k>) and spells <jx> as <j> > (Esperanto <j> is Ido <y>). However, the other two special letters use > digraphs, <ch sh>; I suppose one might have used <q x> had one not > wanted to use those for <qu> = /kw/ and <x> = /ks/ (/gz/?).
As you mentioned, some letters/phonemes could be eliminated by merging with others, but that involves a little more than just orthographic reform. /x/ -> /h/ (or /k/?) /ts/ -> /s/, /z/ or maybe /tS/. Then you could have something like: <ux> -> <w> <j> -> <y> <jx> -> <j> <cx> -> <c> <sx> -> <x> <gx> -> <q> It's not too pretty, but neither is the existing system. However now it's easily machinable. ------------------------------ dejnx nxtxr / Dana Nutter LI SASXSEK LATIS. http://www.nutter.net/sasxsek

Replies

Michael Adams <abrigon@...>
wayne chevrier <wachevrier@...>