There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Non-linear full-2d writing (again)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: More Gwr sound changes
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Minza spelling reform
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 20:56:00 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
John Vertical wrote:
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolt_Sami , the language uses
> g-caron for /J\/ and g-stroke for /G/.
Actually, it does seem useful to have g-caron and k-caron for /J\/, /c/.
I don't really like the g-stroke character, though (especially in a font
with a loop for the descender of the g).
> By the way, have a good look at what the wikipedia article says about
> the phonology. Contrasting /c J\/ with /tS dZ/ is a first for me - and
> the vowel system is simply batshit insane: there's EIGHT central vowels
> alone, apparently all with contrastive lenght! And here I thought
> Germanic systems were byzantine.
>
> Also, what's the fixation on expressing /G/ as some variant of <g>?
> There's plenty of other letters too.
Well, in that case plain unaccented "q" seems like a reasonable
alternative, or "x" if /x/ is spelled "h". I think it's a stretch to use
some accented letter other than "g", although "r" might be a possibility
as you mentioned. I use "y" as a vowel (between i\ and u\), and accent
marks on "j" have major problems in most fonts.
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:10:20 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> The most well-known use of g-wedge is as a device in transliterating
> Arabic, since the letter pronounced [dZ] in other places is pronounced
> [g] in Egyptian Arabic, so from that perspective g-wedhe for [G] is
> dead wrong. Semiticists and Indologists generally use g with a dot
> above and Germanicists use g with a line through the descender, while
> Turkicists use g-breve and Mongolianists gamma. I would recommend
> g-dot since it is in the Latin Extended A range and hence in Times
> New Roman, but I have another more radical suggestion, namely to use
Hmm, I didn't consider the g-dot since I was associating it with Maltese
/dZ/, but that would work. That suggests a possibility of using the dot
above as a general "fricativizing" mark in foreign names, which would
work nicely for English "th" sounds and even Czech ř ("Dvoṙak" for
Dvořák, which would be something like "Dovóržak" or "Duóžrak" if fully
assimilated).
> q (yes /kju:/!) since the Arabic letter usually transliterated q
> is pronounced [G] or [R] in Persian. The UniPers suggested Roman
> alphabet for Persian uses q generally for [G]/[R]. Simplified
> phonetic transcription of Icelandic also uses q for [G], since
> Icelandic can then be transcribed using the characters on an
> ordinary Icelandic keyboard, using I Y ö e for /I Y 2 E/.
That would also work, since I'm not using "q" for anything yet.
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:25:16 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Non-linear full-2d writing (again)
Sai Emrys wrote:
> (Grr mail problems.)
>
> On 1/25/06, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
>>To be _fully_ 2D it must be at least a network, and something *that
>>cannot be recomposed in linear form _without loss of meaning_*.
>
>
> I think this is a pretty good summary.
Thanks :)
> With of course the clause that everything can be linearized (viz. all
> digitization) with no actual loss of data;
Yes, of course, we can scan practically everything and record as a
linear list of 0s and 1s, and then, if we know the right algorithm,
recompose the thing again. We could even just arbitrarily (or, indeed,
systematically) chop up the full-2d writing and arrange all the pieces
linearly. But......
> it's just that they loose
> *comprehensibility*.
Yes.
> (E.g. arrays -> lists still preserve their data,
> but are not nearly as easy to read as a NxN grid.)
>
> So perhaps, "without loss of comprehensible meaning"?
OK.
>>Secondly, there must be positive reason for using two dimensions. It
>>should not be just linear stuff, recomposed, with a few extra 'fancy bits'.
>
> *nod*
>
>>What, I think, we are attempting is to represent thought without having
>>to process the thoughts through linear language. It is an attempt to
>>represent thought(s) as, say, a 'thought-web'.
>
>
> This point I would quibble about.
>
> I think it is definitely a subpart of the larger problem, but it is
> not equal. Expressing thoughts is only one purpose to which language
> (including this one) can be put; the language / writing system itself
> is a (ahem) content-free grammar.
>
> The general purpose of language is to communicate, period.
Yes, indeed, whether it is positive, informative communication or indeed
deliberately obscure or false in order to deceive. It is still
communication.
> So it is a
> dangerous exaggeration to say that all communications / writings in
> this language need be of the scope and detail (and form) of
> thought-representation.
Yes, I guess I meant that it should be of sufficient complexity to be
able to do so if one wished. But I must confess some ignorance over
things like 'thought-webs' and, indeed, of cognitive science. So I may
well err on these matters.
> Of course, that brings up the question of what you *are* trying to
> communicate (if not the entirety of the thought, which would be rather
> 'tall order' indeed)... and how much you leave unstated under the
> assumption that the reader can figure out, or already has, the
> necessary extra info.
And, indeed, how much do you want to communicate. You may wish to keep
the other person in the dark on some matters.
>>>and kept overstating my position
>>
>>IME a common habit of those who disagree with one another :)
>
>
> I try not to do it. It's irritating, and distracting. Makes me think
> that someone is a bit too ego-scared, requires coddling and firmness
> to get anywhere. A distraction.
I agree entirely. At school we were taught to try to understand the
other person's point of view, even if we found it repugnant. The idea
was to see where the person was coming from and try to find some common
ground and move on from there.
[snip]
>>Yes, an overstatement - to say something is _completely_ impossible is
>>often rash. I don't know how realizable such a non-linear full-2d
>>writing system is - perhaps it may prove impossible. But until we try we
>>will not know.
>
>
> OK, that was an overstatement on *my* part. What she said more
> precisely was that she believed firmly that it would not be
> *practicable*, useful by normals, or useable even by specialists
> except with great difficulty.
How can one have such a _firm_ belief? Many ideas have been deemed not
to practical in the past and have since turned out to be very practical.
I have no doubt that all those visionaries down the ages that had
ideas that humans could take to the air were told more than once that
their ideas were impractical & they were wasting their time.
--
Ray
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:40:18 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
John Vertical wrote:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>> > and the vowel
>> > system is simply batshit insane: there's EIGHT central vowels alone,
>> > apparently all with contrastive lenght! And here I thought Germanic
>> systems
>> > were byzantine.
>>
>> English aside, what's so byzantine about Germanic vowel systems?
>
>
> Dutch and Danish also spring to mind as fairly complex, and most of the
> others have at least in some dialects some fairly creative
> complications. Standard Swedish and German I find comparatively simple,
> but they're still a notch up from the "standard" /i e a o u/.
And the "standard" /i e a o u/ was the Byzantine inventory of vowels. :-)
--
Ray
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:21:20 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: More Gwr sound changes
* Roger Mills said on 2006-01-26 21:50:42 +0100
> A revised (but still prelim) pdf has been uploaded to my site--
> http://cinduworld.tripod.com/gwr_soundchange.pdf -- containing some
> new introductory material (a bit of history/development), plus it now
> covers all CVCV forms, initial/final stress. (final stress begins on
> p.10). As before, comments welcome.
>
> Am hard at work on the CVCVC forms, but it's causing extreme brain-pain
> :-)))
Such brain-pain is *good for you*, keeps the brain healthy and large :)
Keep hurting,
t., who's hooked on Sudoku and Kakuro...
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:48:26 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
--- In [email protected], Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Well, in that case plain unaccented "q" seems like a reasonable
>alternative, or "x" if /x/ is spelled "h". I think it's a stretch
to
>use some accented letter other than "g", although "r" might be a
>possibility as you mentioned. I use "y" as a vowel (between i\ and
>u\), and accent marks on "j" have major problems in most fonts.
I don't like digraphs or diacritical marks, although it's not
possible
to completely avoid the latter. I had to use them for /ts)/ (s-
grave) and /dz)/ (z-grave).
For the palatal row I use the following:
c = /c/
g = /J\/
x = /C/
q = /j\/
h-bar = /j_0/
j (or yogh) = /j/
I'd like to use kra (I think that's the name) from the Greenlandic
alphabet for /c/ and use "c" for /ts)/, but then there's no grapheme
to go with it for /J\/ without using a diacritical mark. Oh well!
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:23:44 +0100
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
caeruleancentaur skrev:
> For the palatal row I use the following:
> c = /c/
> g = /J\/
> x = /C/
> q = /j\/
> h-bar = /j_0/
> j (or yogh) = /j/
What, then, do you use for /g/?
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
"Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it
it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
means "no"!
(Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:18:44 +0100
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
John Vertical skrev:
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolt_Sami , the language uses
> g-caron for /J\/ and g-stroke for /G/.
> By the way, have a good look at what the wikipedia article says about
> the phonology. Contrasting /c J\/ with /tS dZ/ is a first for me - and
> the vowel system is simply batshit insane: there's EIGHT central vowels
> alone, apparently all with contrastive lenght! And here I thought
> Germanic systems were byzantine.
AFAIK the only language with a claim to Byzantine phonologies
is medieval Greek!
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
"Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it
it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
means "no"!
(Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:36:06 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
On 1/27/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What, then, do you use for /g/?
Perhaps the same symbol used in English for /?\/ ? :)
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:06:33 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minza spelling reform
caeruleancentaur skrev:
>> For the palatal row I use the following:
>> c = /c/
>> g = /J\/
>> x = /C/
>> q = /j\/
>> h-bar = /j_0/
>> j (or yogh) = /j/
Benct Philip Jonsson per pêca:
>What, then, do you use for /g/?
Whoops! Sorry about that. It's not /j\/, it's /g/. Thanks for
pointing that out. Part of the never-ending process of creating a
conlang: little discrepancies to be corrected.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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