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

Dana Nutter nevesht:
>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.
>
>
My idea goes like this:

	<ux>	->	<w>
	<j>	->	<j>
	<jx>	->	<zy> or <jy>
	<cx>	->	<cy>
	<sx>	->	<sy>
	<gx>	->	<xy> or <gy>
                <dz>         ->            <x>









--Wayne Chevrier

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