Re: On Topic Wednesday: Universal Synthetic Languages

In article <8qki625a879bebsl4tnk7b5mhb2sgvj0h8@xxxxxxx>,
<r.rice@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On 15 May 2006 11:57:42 -0700, "Neon Fox" <neonfox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

r.rice@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Interesting. But, I would assume, perhaps incorrectly, that the Roman
alphabet had w, v, and j. And, having googled, it appears that they
did not have v and j, but did have w. Which makes it even odder that
Gaelic doesn't use w.

You have to keep in mind that the V sound and the W sound--ISTR that
Gaelic doesn't use the sound at the beginning of "judge", but I could
be
wrong as my semesters of Gaelic were years ago--were not "v" and "w"
but "slender aspirated m" and "broad aspirated m". The common Celtic-
language phenomenons of lenition and eclipsis lead to sounds being
seen as related in ways that Romance and Germanic speakers don't
find terribly intuitive.

I can understand the idea behind it, I just don't quite get why they
didn't come up with different letters for them, instead of using h as
the symbol for them. Especially if it was being written down by
people who had an alphabet with letters that are reasonably close the
sounds. I mean, if I were going to write down something a Russian was
saying, I wouldn't use Cyrillic, I'd just use whatever letter I know
that sounds closest.

Rebecca

You would think, but iirc, Cyril was a Byzantine, who spoke Greek and
used the Greek alphabet, but for some reason decided not to establish
conventions for using the Greek alphabet for Slavic languages, but to
set up a whole new script..


Ted
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why didnt Greek speciate like Latin or Germanic Languages?
    ... the Greek alphabet isn't complicated, the Arabic script is more ... phonemically diverse letters as baa and yaa and nun and taa and thaa ... claims that the two sets of dots are the ones that are opposed to no- ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Google Translator treatment of Bulgarian and Macedonian
    ... letters are particularly good for calligraphy. ... can't read a Russian book for fun - it is already work. ... The Russian alphabet is more self-similar than the English ... The Serbian alphabet is more self-similar than the Croatian ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana are different LANGUAGES.
    ... that no one has commented "these 'writing systems' are 'pictographic' ... The roman alphabet may memorialize ancient representations of concrete ... memorializing the Phoenician ancient representations of concrete objects. ... the meaning of some of the names of the Hebrew letters is the same ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: The World Atlas of Language Structures Online
    ... and "J" are now different letters? ... The 30 letter alphabet goes ... "D" is defined as the "quinta letra del ... distinto de las letras que lo componen. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: new book on the spread of IE
    ... systems involve alphabets with multiples of 9 letters -- and the fact ... The Ionic alphabet had 24 letters, ... epigraphy lists them as "the very first Greek alphabet." ... The originals were gold disks worn on the shoulders by ...
    (sci.lang)