Re: Zvelebil/Epstein/McReynold Comparison
Saul Epstein 
Fri, 10 Jul 1998 21:08:37 -0500

Quotes from: Rob Zook <rzook*informix,com>
Date: Friday, July 10, 1998 5:42 PM
 
> At 04:49 PM 7/10/98 -0500, Saul Epstein wrote:
>
> > Incidentally, to further confuse matters, I can see
> > a lot of possibility in the direction of some of
> > Ryan's suggestions. Especially, if we use <c> and
> > <j> for the sounds in "church" and "judge"
> > respectively, that eliminates one of the two-
> > character signs (<ch>) and one of the three-
> > character signs (<dzh>). 
> 
> Well, the only thing I don't like about that is it
> seems less elegant than having the symbols for that
> set of sounds structurally similar to the IPA
> versions. With <j> for <zh> and <dj> for <dzh>, and
> <c> for <sh> and <tc> for <ch>.

I think you mean that doing it that way better represents the
phonetic relationships of the sounds -- and you're right. That's
exactly why I proposed it. At the same time, I have this theory that
the "church" and "judge" sounds were blade-stops at an earlier stage
of the language, and IPA uses a modified <c> and <j> for precisely
those sounds. Mostly, though, I don't think we should lean too
heavily on other alphabets, like IPA. They all attempt to do the same
thing we're doing, just with different sounds.

(BTW, if we go this route with <c> and <j>, I'd be rather tempted to
suggest that we use <ch> to represent original <sh> -- which would
seem intuitive to, for instance, French speakers -- and <jh> for
original <zh>. Both on the logic of <kh> for /x/.)

> >Also, if we follow the logic of <kh> for /x/, we could use <ph>
for /f/, 
> >freeing <f> to represent the voiceless W (currently at <w~>) and
thereby
> >eliminating the other three-character sign (<w~l>) by replacing it
> >with <fl>...
> 
> Now, this idea, I do like.

That's reassuring. It seems a natural thing to me, but I seem to have
a strange perspective on these things.
 
> I think we got two votes for the vowel+h diagraphs (hint, hint :).

:-p I would be more concerned about that if I thought we actually
needed more than six vowel signs. And, now that I think about it, if
we use <bh> for /v/, and <v> for /w/ (on the same pattern as <ph> for
/f/ and <f> for original <w~>, that frees up <w> for /u/ and <u> for
/^/.

<laugh type="mad scientist" loop=5 fade>

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus
"Swrakri' ov'patswr the's'hi the's'ca'; the's'parka
    the's'hi swrakeca'."
                                        -- K'dbharin Wrsfl'at