Post by Hooligan on Dec 29, 2017 16:38:05 GMT -6
Azul à thoct --
My apologies for being late to this discussion. And since I am late, I am starting this as a new thread, but can move this into the main thread if that makes sense.
But I figured I should summarize what I know of the proposals so far, with my own thoughts. NOTE: this may be simplifying things a bit, and if so, I'm sorry; please correct me. This may also be inaccurate in terms of what the proposals are, and again, please correct me.
Please let me know if I have missed any of the remaining differences between the two orthographies (for example, both orthographies have abolished ø, so I did not include that, but I may have missed something else?).
Hool
My apologies for being late to this discussion. And since I am late, I am starting this as a new thread, but can move this into the main thread if that makes sense.
But I figured I should summarize what I know of the proposals so far, with my own thoughts. NOTE: this may be simplifying things a bit, and if so, I'm sorry; please correct me. This may also be inaccurate in terms of what the proposals are, and again, please correct me.
| ITEM | DIFFERENCE (Traditional vs. Common Spelling) | PROPOSAL | MY THOUGHTS |
| The infinitive word-ending | In TS, this was -ar (and -arë and -irë). In CS, it became -arh (and -irh). | Standardize on -ar (and -ir), abolishing both the silent ë of TS and the word-ending h of CS. | Since word-ending -r devoices, this seems to me that the (English-sound-here) "osh" ending does not need the h to reinforce it. In favour. |
| Unsilent ë | TS used this in many words (such as për). CS recognized it as an allophone of e and abolished it, adopting it as a mark of diaeresis. | Agree on its abolition as a sound separate from e and on its adoption as a mark of diaeresis. | In favour. |
| û | TS used this in some words (especially in the word-ending -oûr). CS abolished it (initially adopting it as stressmarked ü but later abandoning that, and admitting û as a "decorative mark" seen in TS). | Agree on its abolition. | In favour. (See ā/â and î and ê and ô, below, though; I like the idea of recognising û as a "decorative" form of stressmarked u; in this way, for example, the word-ending -oûr is simply an unnecessarily-stressmarked rendition of -our). |
| è | TS used this in some words. CS recognised it as an allophone of e, and adopted it as an alternative way to stressmark e (just as all other vowels can be marked for stress using either of the two accent marks). | Agree on its abolition and use (with é) as stressmarked e. | In favour. |
| å | TS used this in a small number of words. CS recognised it as an allophone of a, and abolished it. | Agree on its abolition. | In favour. |
| â and ā | TS used â as a word-ending schwa-a (which also indicated feminine word-gender). CS recognised it as an allophone of a, and initially adopted â instead as stressmarked ä, but later abandoned that, and admitted â as a decorative mark (also seen in its original form, ā), seen in TS like û mentioned above. | Agree on what the Arestada of 2012 says of it, which is that ā exists and can be seen in formal writing, but â and a are seen more commonly used for it in casual writing. | Personally, I'd like to re-abolish ā/â and recognise only a. It seems to me that distinguishing "formal vs. casual" spelling is just as serious an acceptance of "two orthographies" as is the CS vs. TS distinction that we are trying to end here, so if we're reunisioning, I don't see why we would retain "in formal writing, you see it but otherwise (like 98% of the time), you don't". That said, I know it's not reunisiony to say this, but I actually liked the nod to û and â as "decorative, seen by Traditional Spellers" way to handle this. Personally, I have also thought that this would be the best way to handle î, which is the next topic... |
| î | TS used this as a distinct phoneme (one that is heard in Russian, and difficult for English-speakers to master), and also (without that sound) in the present participle ending -ind. CS acknowledged that the sound is not spoken well by Talossan speakers, and abolished it, respelling all the words that used it so that they instead use other vocalics (i, e, ei, a, etc.). For example, avînt (=before) became avant and cînt (=hundred) became chint). | Return it, although perhaps after adopting Sir Tomás Gareçeir's 1995 proposal that it become simply i when it is preceded or followed by a liquid consonant (n or r). If we are to return it, though, forms other than î are being discussed (since it would be the only vocalic marked with a circumflex; for example, perhaps for consistency it would return as ï, although this would mean ï would no longer be used as a mark of diaeresis and call ë's use for that into question). | This one is extremely tough, and I'm not sure where I am on it right now. As I mentioned above, despite what might be perceived as this being a non-reunisionness concept, I have always liked the idea that the circumflex-marked vowels, now that they're not used at all in CS, are "decorative, seen written by Traditional Spellers". I see that Cresti has started a whole thread on this particular question for us to discuss it there. |
| ê and ô | TS retains these, the first as the stressmarked ë, and the second as the stressmarked o. CS abolished the first of these entirely (with the abolition of ë), and -- with the recognition of ó and ò as the consistent-among-all-vowels way of marking stress on o, initially adopted ô as stressmarked ö, abandoning that in 2012. | Agree on their abolition. | In favour, although, as discussed above, I would personally be okay with recognising ê and ô as "decorative" versions of stressmarked e and o, often seen used by Traditional Spellers (just as I like doing the same for the other circumflex-marked vowels â, î, and û). |
| Stressmarking | TS used stressmarks in many places where the CS-adopted stress rule makes them unnecessary. Some of the more commonly seen of these are the word-endings -eir and -an. CS retained "unnecessary" marks only to distinguish between two otherwise identical words, and in other forms of either of those words (for example, a = she and à = to, àl = to the, etc.). | Agree on the CS stress rules (although technically, marking default stress would never be necessarily proclaimed exactly wrong). | In favour. |
Please let me know if I have missed any of the remaining differences between the two orthographies (for example, both orthographies have abolished ø, so I did not include that, but I may have missed something else?).
Hool
