Re: Fwd: vowel notation; yet another visit Rob Zook Mon, 16 Nov 1998 14:16:12 -0600 Sorik of Vulcan wrote: > >Vowels: > >i bIt-bEAt > >u pOOl > >e bEt-bAit > >o bOtch-bOUGHt > >a bUtter > >aa/ah bArter > >y "ai" dipthong > > > >So, except for aa/ah, we've dropped nearly all the doubled letter > >vowels. At least in writing. We still may have some varient sounds > >with unspelled allophones. But that's something we can play with > >later on. > > > > I think that there is too much difference between the two sounds bEt > and bAit to have then repersented the same way. If the sound in bait > were capitalized, like "bEt", it would avoid this problem. Also, the > same is true of the difference between bIt and bEAt. Well, when you pronounce those words in American English, I would agree the two sets of words sound very different, but what we've generally followed is some strange linguistic tradition of using the British English vowel pronunciations. When I pronouncing them using my half assed British pronunciation, those differences seem quite minor. > >Consonents: > >zh a_z_ure > >j yet > >dj jet > >n~ -- > I must make a final holar on this... If means the sound in "jet", > then must be the sound in "measure" and not . It makes not > sense to have that contradiction. I happen to agree with you in this case, but as Saul says this is a collaborative effort, and we all must make compromizes. We went over all this in great detail, and if you can get Marketa to reverse her view, that's well and good. As far as I'm concerned, she and her father have final say on what becomes "canon" for the ZC Vulcan. However, I think that re-hashing this over and over again has dubious utility. I think our biggest lack right now is grammar, and we can work most if not all of that out without knowing how to pronounce things (unless of course it's dependant on the grammar, but we don't have anything like that AFAIK). Rob Z.